


kids of the in-between

by sunshineinthestorm



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: College AU, F/M, M/M, Ronan's an artist, Slow Burn, there's angst but they'll all be happy in the end i promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-08-09 11:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 57,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7799821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshineinthestorm/pseuds/sunshineinthestorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story of fast cars, blinding rage, discarded dreams, pencil sketches, and finding happiness. Not necessarily in that order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gasoline and Summer and Vinyl and Mint

**Author's Note:**

> This story started as me having a lot of feelings about pre-series Gangsey and wanting to write about them. Then I remembered that I'd have to stop where canon picked up and decided on this mess of a college au instead, featuring my all-time favorite headcanon, artist Ronan! 
> 
> Shout-out to [@adamllynch](http://adamllynch.tumblr.com) because at least 50% of the reason this story even exists is because I needed to get my mind off of her outstanding fic [Steady All the Hands.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6617710/chapters/15142264)
> 
> Extra special shout-out to [@pygmytyrants](http://pygmytyrants.tumblr.com) for being my #1 cheerleader and incredible beta.
> 
> Title for this fic comes from "The War Inside" by Switchfoot, which the great Maggie Stiefvater once said was part of the soundtrack she used while writing The Raven Boys. Speaking of Maggie, any time you read a line in this fic that sounds familiar, chances are good that it can be found in one of her beautiful books. I own neither those words nor any of her wonderful characters.
> 
> Trigger warnings for this chapter include descriptions of gore and character death. Skip the last section of this chapter if you're worried, and I'll fill you in on what happened in the end notes. :)

_Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III._

Ronan looked at the name plaque next to his door with raised eyebrows. He couldn't decide whether the name amused or annoyed him more. It didn't surprise him, though. After all, this was the dorm of the filthy rich, the domain of the freshmen whose parents were wealthy enough to add a generous donation to the already-exorbitant tuition. Ronan wouldn't have bought into it, but it was also the only freshman dorm with suites instead of doubles, and there was no way in hell he was going to share a room with someone. If he had to suffer through the presence of Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III in order to be alone when it mattered, then he would. Besides, it wasn't like his dad had minded spending the extra money. 

"Oh, hello. Is this your suite too?" The voice behind him was almost painfully polite, crisp and commanding with the slightest twang of old Virginia buried beneath the surface. It made Ronan's ears itch. 

He turned and raised his eyebrows at the salmon polo shirt and new boat shoes that immediately assaulted his vision. "Dick?"

Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III winced, and the old Virginia twang was gone when he said, "Please, call me Gansey."

A slow smile slid across Ronan's face as he marveled at how quickly Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III had offered him a loaded gun in the form of a name. "Ronan," he responded before turning back around, unlocking the door to their suite, and waiting. Waiting to hear Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III's voice slide back into its Virginian accent, waiting to feel Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III's silent judgment as he stared at the obscene combat boots and obscene band t-shirt and obscene faded jeans that surely went against everything his khaki pants and flawless haircut stood for, waiting to use his loaded gun as soon as Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III insulted him first.

But then Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III did none of those things. Instead, he leaned forward and splayed his fingers across Ronan's back in order to flatten his shirt before saying excitedly, "Is this written in Irish?"

A retort was ready on Ronan's tongue before he realized that he hadn't been insulted. Cautiously, he pulled his hand off the doorknob and turned. "Yes?"

Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III leaned forward. "Can you read Irish?"

Ronan shrugged. "A little. Not as well as Latin, though."

Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III's eyes widened, and then he grinned, and Ronan was startled because it wasn't the million-watt, White-House-ready smile that he'd been confronted with at first. This grin was a little crooked, a little disarming, and a lot enthusiastic. He hadn't known until now that the Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey IIIs of the world were capable of genuine smiles. 

"That's incredible," this Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III was saying when Ronan bothered to tune in. "I've been studying ancient languages for years, but I'm still having trouble mastering most of them. Do you think you could take a look at an old book I've been translating when you have the time? There's one passage that's been giving me trouble for days."

Ronan furrowed his eyebrows. "How are you doing schoolwork already? Orientation hasn't even started yet."

"Oh, it's not for school," Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III said. "Although I hope that I'll eventually be translating old books for school as well."

Ronan was interested in spite of himself. "What are you studying?"

"History," Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III said with another excited grin. "Eventually, I'm hoping to narrow my focus to Great Britain, primarily in the early medieval period, but it's just general history for now."

Ronan was starting to think he'd misjudged this particular Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III. Despite the salmon polo shirt and hideous boat shoes, he didn't fit the condescending old money stereotype that Ronan had tried to stuff him into. Condescending old money rich boys studied political science, talked and walked like politicians, and wore smiles that never reached their eyes. They certainly didn't get excited over Latin books and early medieval British history. "Are you taking the seminar on Irish folklore, then?"

"Yes!" Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III's smile could have shorted out the sun. "Are you?"

Ronan nodded. He'd taken it because all freshmen were required to take a writing seminar and his father's Irish bedtime stories made Ronan fairly confident that he could skate his way through the course, but Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III was obviously genuinely fascinated by the subject. "That's perfect," he said, running a hand through his expensive haircut and ruining it. The action transformed him into a real person instead of a walking magazine ad, and Ronan loved it. "We can sit next to each other. Anyway, I haven't eaten lunch yet. Do you want to go get pizza with me?"

Ronan wound one finger through the leather bands on his wrist. "How far would we have to walk?"

Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III smiled yet again. "Only to the parking lot. I have a car."

Ronan braced himself for something boringly expensive and boringly immaculate. What he got was a 1973 Camaro that sputtered rather than purred, dulled the rest of world by existing in a strange shade of screaming orange, and roared as soon as it reached the road.

It smelled like gasoline and summer and vinyl and mint. 

Ronan adored it.

And just like that, Gansey and Ronan were friends.

* * *

 

The week of freshman orientation, Ronan blew off most of the required meet-and-greet events in favor of breaking onto the roof of their dorm or finding a corner of campus to sit and sketch. Gansey, on the other hand, attended each and every event and chattered about the people he'd met through dining hall lines or over boxes of greasy pizza. Sometimes he even brought one or two of those people along. Ronan considered feeling jealous, but it was hard to get mad at Gansey for having other friends when those friends all disappeared at the end of dinner, and Ronan got to join Gansey in the passenger seat of his Pig or in a booth at Gansey's favorite ice cream parlor or on the lumpy couch that Gansey had bought for their suite because he thought it gave their living room the proper college dorm aesthetic. Ronan didn't bother telling him that when the rest of the living room was filled with bookshelves and crates and piles containing old papers and maps and rare books, there was no chance of obtaining whatever the fuck a proper college aesthetic was. He'd rather sit on the couch and help Gansey translate Latin. 

His favorite nights, however, were the nights when an edge hardened Gansey's enthusiastic grin into something mischievous and daring—when the line of Gansey's back was straight and unafraid and everything Ronan said made Gansey's eyes gleam under the harsh dorm lighting. On those nights, they skipped the Pig and the booth and their ugly couch. On those nights, Gansey joined him on the roof, bringing along bottles of shitty beer because he considered them "an essential part of the college experience," even though he could easily afford something that didn't taste like dirt. On those nights, neither of them felt like sleeping, so instead they drank shitty beer and looked at the stars and Ronan talked about the woods behind the Barns and his favorite animals at the Barns and sitting on a stable roof to paint his brother Matthew against the backdrop of the Barns, glowing below him in the light of the sun and talking to the cows like they understood him. Gansey, in turn, told him about being stung to death by hornets and waking up in the hospital to worried parents and amazed doctors and finding out about Glendower just four days later. 

"It would have seemed like a coincidence, if I believed in coincidences," he said one night. "It was actually a purpose, a reason that I survived a hundred stings that should have killed me. A Welsh king from six hundred years ago, possibly buried right here on the east coast? It'd be the archaeological find of the century. It'd be a national treasure. It'd be proof of magic and miracles—a king laid to rest in our very own country hundreds of years before the concept of independence sprouted from colonial minds. Can you imagine what finding that would be like?" 

Ronan would have thought Gansey sounded pretentious if he wasn't so youthfully sincere. How could he not be? He'd been hunting his Welsh king for seven sleepless years. 

"What made you stop?"

Gansey grinned that daring grin and said, "Who says I did?" And then he took a swig of beer and changed the subject, and Ronan would have asked him more questions, he really would have, but Gansey changed the subject to ask about sunsets at the Barns, and sunsets at the Barns were fucking miracles. 

In this way, the week of freshman orientation passed in a pleasant blur of dining hall lines and screaming orange cars and shitty beers and rooftops and secrets, and one week and six days after meeting Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III, Ronan watched Gansey actually quiver with excitement as they found empty seats in their Irish folklore seminar at precisely 9:57 a.m. on a Thursday morning. Gansey took out a leather notebook and an expensive-looking pen and dated the first page of his notes in careful anticipation. Ronan pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of the bottom of his bag and promptly started drawing bagpipes and leprechauns in the margins. 

"You're really good," Gansey said with some surprise when he glanced over at 9:59 a.m. 

"I'm an art major," Ronan reminded him, and then he quickly sketched Gansey's profile in the corner of the page so he could see his eyebrows raise in appreciation just before the professor entered the room. 

Ronan tried to pay attention. He honestly did. But the ticking clock at the back of the room was a lot louder than their professor's droning monotone as he rambled about syllabi and class expectations and a myth that Ronan had heard a hundred times by the time he was eight, and the sketches taking shape on his page were a lot more interesting. Ronan doodled mindlessly for a few minutes before Gansey nudged him, and then he dutifully raised his head to give the semblance of paying attention. Instead of seeing their professor, his eyes caught on the dusty brown hair of a boy sitting two rows in front of him and one seat to the left. 

There was nothing particularly intriguing about the boy's haircut or the slope of his shoulders or the boring way he sat up straight in his chair and watched the professor with studious attention. But there was something very intriguing about the hand taking the boy's meticulous notes. It was long and slim and graceful, and the longness and slimness was punctuated by large knuckles and callouses and freckles, and Ronan was suddenly sure that the hand holding the boy's notebook in place, while hidden by the dusty brown hair and sloping shoulders, was just as interesting. 

He found himself sketching calloused, freckled, graceful hands until the end of the period, and he regretted nothing. 

* * *

Two weeks and five days after meeting Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III, Ronan was waiting next to the Pig when his best friend walked up with a tanned, dusty-haired boy in tow. "This is Adam Parrish," Gansey told him. "He's coming out for pizza with us."

Ronan wouldn't have paid any attention to the latest person in Gansey's string of acquaintances, had it not been for three unavoidable facts. 

First, Gansey's voice held no trace of his old Virginian accent when he talked to Adam Parrish. 

Second, the Pig did not sputter to life when Gansey started the engine, as it sometimes did, and instead of letting Gansey call a servicing company, Adam Parrish offered to fix it himself. 

Third, when Adam Parrish lifted the hood of the 1973 Camaro, Ronan recognized his freckled, calloused, large-knuckled hands. 

After that, not paying attention proved to be impossible. With as much nonchalance as he could manage, Ronan slid out of the passenger seat and watched over Adam Parrish's shoulder as he pointed out frayed cables and detached wires to an eager Gansey. His fingers were very nice for pointing. And as boring as his dusty haircut was, Ronan couldn't help but notice that Adam's river blue eyes and slightly crooked nose were as interesting as his hands. Very casually, Ronan leaned farther over Adam's left shoulder and said, "Where'd you learn how to fix cars, Parrish?"

Adam didn't even flinch. Ronan was impressed until he poked the boy's shoulder and said, "Parrish?", and Adam whirled around in surprise. 

"Sorry, did you say something?"

Ronan tugged at a curl of his hair and arched his eyebrows. "Yes."

"You're going to have to repeat yourself," Adam said apologetically. "I can't hear out of my left ear."

Gansey immediately clucked his tongue and expressed his sympathies, looking at Adam's ear with ill-concealed concern despite Adam's reassurances that he was used to it by now. Ronan leaned against the Pig and crossed his arms. He was beginning to think that Adam Parrish's haircut was deceptive, a disguise carefully constructed to conceal how interesting the rest of him was.

That night at dinner, Ronan drew ravens and trees on napkins and made paper footballs out of the leftovers and flicked them at Gansey and Adam when they weren't paying enough attention to him. He ate four slices of pizza and dumped an extra slice on Adam's plate when he noticed how little he was eating and drawled out condescending remarks about the classmates Gansey mentioned in an attempt to get Adam Parrish to laugh, which worked about 40% of the time. After dinner, they stopped at Gansey's ice cream parlor even though Adam claimed that he didn't feel like eating dessert, and Ronan ordered the largest sundae they had and pushed it over to Adam after only a few bites, declaring that he was full and didn't want it to go to waste. Adam stubbornly refused to take it at first, but when the sundae was halfway melted and Ronan still showed no signs of picking up a spoon, Adam finally sighed and pulled the bowl closer to him. Ronan had noticed the frayed edges of Adam's t-shirt and the holes in his jeans that were evidence of wear rather than style, even if Gansey seemed oblivious. He watched Adam Parrish use his freckled hands and interesting mouth to finish off the entire sundae and practically lick the bowl clean, and he didn't miss that Adam laughed at about 60% of the things Ronan said after that. 

All in all, he considered the night a success. 

"So," Gansey said after they'd dropped Adam off at his dorm. "You didn't seem to hate Adam as much as you've hated everyone else you've met."

Ronan drummed his fingers on the dashboard. "I didn't hate them," he said. "I thought they were boring."

"And you don't think Adam is boring?"

Ronan thought Adam was probably the most interesting person at the school, after Gansey, but he didn't say that. "He's not terrible. We could eat with him at the dining hall tomorrow."

Gansey looked at Ronan carefully. "I'm thinking about telling him about Welsh kings."

Ronan looked away just as carefully. "You should," he said. "Parrish seems like as much of a nerd as you are. He might know some interesting shit."

It was quiet then, quiet enough that Ronan turned back around to gauge Gansey's reaction. He was grinning again, the daring one that was Ronan's favorite. That night on the roof, they talked about Welsh kings and befriending Adam Parrish and Ronan's first long-term art assignment and absolutely nothing at all, and the beer tasted slightly less shitty than usual. Ronan thought that he could imagine Adam joining them on the roof at some point. Or maybe just joining Ronan. 

His dreams that night contained faded t-shirts and paper footballs. They smelled like gasoline and mint and Adam Parrish. The next morning, Ronan's mother called, and his happiness was complete. 

"Hello, darling!" Aurora's voice was sunshine leaking through the receiver of Ronan's phone. "How is school?"

Ronan looked over at Gansey, whose hair was still rumpled from sleep and who was currently prodding his rickety coffee machine like that would get it to function. Ronan was starting to think Gansey liked old broken things too much. "It's fine," he said. "Drawing for a grade isn't as much fun as drawing for Matthew. My roommate is in my Irish folklore seminar. You'd like him, Mom."

Gansey looked away from the coffee machine long enough to push up his old-man glasses and flash him a tired grin. 

"Your father is coming home the day after tomorrow," Aurora said suddenly, and Ronan's stomach bottomed out in joy. "I know you have school, but would you like to come home this weekend? You could bring your roommate if you want."

Ronan grinned so wide his face hurt. "Can I skip school on Monday? It's all my boring classes anyway."

He could hear his mom's hesitation, but he wasn't worried. "Do you have someone in all of your classes that you can get notes from?"

"The professors post everything online now," Ronan said unconcernedly, knowing that his mom knew that he hated computers with an unreasonable fervor. 

But the excuse at least gave her plausible deniability, so he only had to wait a moment before Aurora faked a sigh and said, "All right then. You can stay through Monday. Do you want Declan to come get you?"

Ronan made a face, thankful that his mother couldn't see. "Hang on." He dropped his phone onto the cushion and threw a nearby tennis ball at Gansey to get his attention. 

"What?" Gansey grumbled, running a hand through his hair and ruining it even further. 

"Do you want to come to the Barns with me this weekend? I'm staying through Monday."

A quick, pleased smile startled its way onto Gansey's face, replacing the frustrations of broken coffee machines and irrepressible insomnia. He pushed his glasses up again and said, "I promised I'd stop by a classmate's dorm on Sunday to work on a paper together, but I can come Friday and leave Saturday night. You said it's only two hours from here, right?" Ronan nodded. There was no way he would have gone to a college farther away. "Then we can take the Pig. I can drive back down Monday after class to pick you up."

Ronan tried to ignore the contented warmth spreading through his chest. "Are you sure the Pig will make it that far?"

"Ye of little faith," Gansey scoffed. Then a smug smile skewed his expression into something devious. "Of course, we could ask Adam along. Just in case."

Gansey was probably only teasing him because he knew how little interest Ronan had in any of their other classmates and figured having another person along would annoy him endlessly, but the knowing look in his eyes still made Ronan's chest tight in a way that squeezed some of the contented warmth out. Not too much—not enough to wipe the smile off his face—Gansey probably wouldn't care if he knew anyway—Ronan wasn't even sure there was something for him to know in the first place—but enough for Ronan to quickly shake his head and say, "One new person at the Barns at a time."

Gansey shrugged his understanding and went back to pondering the unfathomable mysteries of coffee machinery, and Ronan picked his phone back up and said, "Gansey can come on Friday and Saturday. He's going to drive me."

"Perfect," Aurora said warmly, showing no hint of begrudging the abrupt way he'd dropped his phone earlier. "I can't wait to see you, sweetheart."

"I can't wait to see you either," Ronan smiled. The contentment found its way back in. "Or Dad. It's been forever."

"Not quite forever," Aurora said with a gentle laugh. "But close enough."

"Mom?" Matthew's voice echoed through the receiver, making Ronan's stomach clench with missing him. "I can't find my sweater."

"Why do you need your sweater, love? It's August." Aurora sounded more amused than annoyed, as she usually did when confronted with her sons' antics. "Well, I have to get going, Ronan dear. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah," Ronan said, already aching with anticipation. 

"I love you, darling."

"Love you too, Mom," Ronan said, even though Gansey could hear. "See you soon." He hung up before the contentment could change into missing her too. 

"So," Gansey said as soon as the phone was discarded again, his face aglow with excitement. "The Barns?"

"The Barns," Ronan agreed. He could feel his hands shaking. He'd been gone for less than three weeks, and Gansey had done a good job of distracting him, but he missed home. There was no place as magical as the Barns. Probably even the tomb of Glendower wouldn't be able to compare. 

He couldn't wait for Gansey to see it. 

* * *

Gansey treated the Barns with the awe they deserved, as Ronan knew he would. He treated Ronan's family to more genuine smiles than Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III ones, as Ronan hoped he would, and he seemed enchanted by Aurora's cooking and delighted by Matthew asking if he would like to be introduced to the cows. 

"Of course I'd like to be introduced to the cows," Gansey said fondly. Matthew was only two years younger than them, but something about his golden curls and innocent smile made him seem younger. Ronan was glad Gansey had picked up on it. "Lead the way, Matthew."

Ronan watched them go before turning to his mom with a hopeful smile. "Do you like Gansey, Mom?"

"Of course," she said with surprise. "He seems lovely. I'm glad you're making friends. Aren't you going to join them?"

"Yeah," Ronan said, leaning up to kiss Aurora's cheek. "I just wanted to make sure you liked him too."

Then he ran outside to watch Gansey exclaim over their massive fruit trees and unusual flowers and placid cows, laughing at his enthusiasm and ignoring the way the afternoon wind whipped Ronan's hair into his eyes. Not even Declan's arrival that evening could spoil his happiness—not when his mom approved of Gansey and Matthew seemed to worship the ground he walked on and Gansey was obviously as enamored with the Barns as Ronan was and Niall Lynch was arriving tomorrow morning. 

Except, except, except, he didn't. 

"What do you mean, you're not coming today?" Ronan demanded, not caring if his tone came out more whiny than composed. "I thought you were supposed to be here by now."

"I was unexpectedly detained by some unfinished business," Niall said, which was what he said whenever he couldn't tell Ronan the whole truth. Ronan preferred to pretend that it was at least mostly the truth, since he couldn't stand liars, and he didn't want his love for his father to make him a hypocrite. "And now my flight's been delayed as well. But I will definitely be home tomorrow morning."

"But Gansey won't be here tomorrow."

"Who?"

"My roommate. I really wanted you to meet him, but he has to go back to school tonight to get some work done." Ronan leaned away from the phone and said to Gansey, "Are you sure you can't do your paper later?"

"Michael's on the lacrosse team, and they have practices and games all week," Gansey said apologetically. "Sunday is the only day he's free. I can come down the next time your father is home, though." He hesitated and glanced at Aurora suddenly. The old Virginia accent slipped into his voice when he added, "If that's all right with you, ma'am."

"Of course it is!" Aurora smiled at him, and then at Ronan. "Tell your father not to worry about the delay. We'll see him tomorrow. This gives me time to buy the ingredients to make him a shepherd's pie, anyway."

Reluctantly, Ronan relayed the new information to his father over the phone. "Sounds good," Niall Lynch said, his voice strong and sure and booming, even over the telephone. "I'm sorry I couldn't make it earlier, Ronan. How is that Irish folklore class going?"

"Boringly," Ronan said, managing to smile again. "The professor can't tell stories nearly as well as you."

"I should hope not," Niall chuckled, "or you might replace me."

"Never," Ronan said vehemently. 

"Good. Well, I have to get going. Wouldn't want to miss my flight. Give your mother and Matthew my love. And give it to Declan, too, if he's within earshot."

"But Dad," Ronan said, "I don't lie."

Niall's laugh rang through the receiver. It was a poor substitute for having his father in front of him, flesh and blood and breathing, but Ronan let it fill the empty spot in his chest for now. "I love you, Ronan."

"I love you too, Dad," Ronan said easily. "See you tomorrow."

The line went dead. 

Ronan distracted himself for the rest of the day by giving Gansey an extended tour of the Barns, pointing out his favorite alcoves and cows and trees and bridges and secrets. He had been a little worried Gansey would resent it if he got mud on his boat shoes, but Gansey couldn't have cared less. In fact, he often ventured into more dirt than Ronan did, completely oblivious to the stains he was slowly rubbing into his khaki pants. Ronan hoped he would replace them with jeans when he noticed the damage. If he noticed the damage.

"Your home," Gansey declared finally, just after Ronan pointed out a pond full of impossibly iridescent fish, "is magical."

"About as magical as the Pig," Ronan said, and promptly spent the rest of the afternoon thinking about how right Gansey was. Wondering if he should tell him the truth. Wondering if he would believe the truth. But if anyone was going to believe him, it would be the boy who was stung to death by hornets and survived, who was given purpose by a Welsh king from the Middle Ages and hadn't stopped hunting his tomb for seven whole years. 

However, dinner was ready before Ronan had made up his mind, and then dinner was over and Gansey had to be getting back. "Bye, Ronan," he said in front of the Pig. His hair was still ruffled from being outside all day. "I'll come back and get you on Monday."

In his disappointment about his father's late arrival, Ronan had forgotten all about going back to college. "Oh!" he said. "You can meet my dad then."

Gansey blinked, as if amazed the idea hadn't occurred to him either. "Of course," he said, and then he grinned. "I'll look forward to it while I suffer through writing a paper on the history of the stock market."

Ronan made a face. "Not the kind of history you had in mind, is it?"

"Actually," Gansey said, "it's surprisingly fascinating. I never knew—"

"Gansey," Ronan said firmly, "I don't care."

Gansey laughed. He was still laughing when he got into the Pig and drove away. 

Ronan went inside and dreamed about his father coming home. 

* * *

The next morning dawned warm and bright, even if the sun seemed a little late in rising and the layer of clouds between it and the ground washed everything in a strangely dull, uniform light. Ronan couldn't care less, because his father was coming home today. In fact... Ronan rushed to the window and grinned at the sight of his father's shark-like BMW in the driveway, a smile that stretched his cheeks as well as his chest. He almost rushed to his parents' bedroom to wake Aurora, or down the hall to Matthew, but then he decided that he wanted to see Niall first. It was selfish, but then Ronan was already aware that he was selfish. He didn't much care. 

With that decided, he practically skidded down the stairs and flew out the front door without shoes or a sweatshirt to protect against the early morning chill. "Dad?" he called out. 

There was no response. 

" _Dad_?"

Still, no one answered, and Ronan resigned himself to the fact that his father was probably out of hearing range. That, or he was silently delighting in hiding from his son. Ronan wouldn't put it past him. Sighing, Ronan decided to check the BMW before setting out across the rest of the property. He hopped off the porch and savored the feeling of his bare feet on the dewy grass before picking up an errant tennis ball and rolling it between his fingers as he strode over to the driveway, calling out for his father as he walked. Upon finding the BMW unlocked and abandoned, Ronan frowned. Niall Lynch adored his car. He wouldn't leave it unlocked, even on his own property, unless... unless what? Ronan walked around the hood of the car, still frowning and contemplating the situation's oddness, when his foot landed in something wet, sticky, and altogether too  _much_  to just be leftover morning dew. 

Ronan looked down, and his stomach flew into his throat. 

He was standing in a puddle of blood. 

"No," Ronan gasped, his eyes dragging along the ground before he could stop himself. " _No_." The blood was flowing slowly toward him, but it didn't appear out of nowhere. Its source was a man, or a man's head, rather, which was still bleeding even though there was already so much blood and he hadn't known there was this much blood in a human body, let alone in the head alone, and it seemed vaguely absurd that there should be so much bloo—

Suddenly, he recognized the curly hair of the man in front of him. 

He recognized it because it looked just like his own. 

He—

Ronan rushed over, a tangle of uncooperative limbs and strangled noises that deserted him as soon as he dropped to his knees in the middle of all the blood and realized that he was still clutching the tennis ball in his hand. He looked at his fingers—white, stiff, clenched so hard they were trembling—with a kind of detached fascination. How strange it was, to still be holding a tennis ball in his hand while his father was—was —

"No," Ronan repeated, throwing the tennis ball as far away as he could reach. "No, this isn't happening. No, you're not my father." He turned the body over to prove it, and Niall Lynch's features were unmistakable, even through all the blood and the crushed state of his nose and the blood and the strange swollen appearance of his cut lip and squeezed shut eyelids and the blood, dripping through Ronan's fingers, dripping onto the rest of the blood and onto him until he was soaked and soaked and soaked in the blood of—

" _You are not my father._ " The words tore out of Ronan, hard and broken and absolutely unintelligible. "You're a dream. I dreamed you. I'm in a dream. The night horrors are going to come, and they'll tear me to pieces but it'll be okay because I'll wake up and you'll be home because this is a dream and—"

_I know when I'm awake and when I'm asleep._

The truth sank in, and Ronan's world imploded, shrinking into a single point of darkness and jagged edges. 

The truth was this:

Three weeks and two days after meeting Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey III, Ronan had found his father's dead body in his own driveway.  

He was still shaking and screaming when Declan found both of them two hours later. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What happened in the last section: Ronan found his father dead in their driveway at the Barns. I'm sure you all knew it was coming :(
> 
> Find me on tumblr: [@actuallymollyweasley](http://actuallymollyweasley.tumblr.com)
> 
> Expect updates approximately once a week!


	2. On Fierce Thunderstorms and Stubborn Sunshine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided that I'm going to put up a new chapter every Sunday because there's no way I'll remember to post on time if I choose Wednesday as my posting day. So congratulations, you get an early chapter!
> 
> [@pygmytyrants](http://pygmytyrants.tumblr.com) deserves all the love and praise for being an A+ beta and all-around A+ human being

It wasn’t like Adam had expected Gansey’s sudden interest in being his friend to last. Gansey lived in the Walton dorms, and he came to every class looking like he’d just stepped out of a meeting with the president, or maybe a friendly golf match with the president that had ended with Gansey victorious and smiling brightly. Everything about him, from his careful part to his boat shoes, screamed money and prestige. Not to mention that Gansey’s closest friend, as far as anyone knew, was Ronan Lynch, and Ronan Lynch was a hurricane all on his own. He couldn’t be bothered to raise his hand in their seminar, but if he was called on, he always scrounged up the right answer. He seemed to float through classes carelessly and effortlessly. Meanwhile, Adam was relying on a scholarship and a part-time job and the strength of his meal plan to get himself through college. Adam hadn’t ever expected to speak to Gansey, let alone become his friend. 

Then Gansey caught up to him one day after Latin and said, “You’re incredible. The only person who might be as good at Latin as you are is Ronan, and that’s only if he’s trying. Are you going to major in it?”

“No,” Adam said hesitantly. “I’m majoring in biochemistry. Pre-med.” Then he winced, because everyone in Henrietta had mocked him about his plans for the future—were probably still mocking him behind his back—telling him he was crazy for trying to go to med school, telling him there was no way he’d find the money to make it four extra years without a full-time job, telling him he’d be better off settling for his “steady” jobs at the car garage and the factory, where a promotion and a respectable income were certainties rather than wishful thinking. It had only ever taken Blue glaring at them and encouraging him to get Adam to discount their insults disguised as warnings. After all, they’d told him that he’d never go to college either, and here he was in his freshman year. Somehow, though, being laughed at by Richard Campbell Gansey III seemed much worse than being laughed at by other employees at the car garage and factory. The Gansey family tree was probably packed with doctors and lawyers and Ph.D.s and all sorts of professions that required extra schooling. If Gansey told Adam that he had no chance of making it into med school, Adam was worried he would believe him.

But then Gansey lit up at Adam’s answer and treated him to a smile that didn’t look like he’d won a golf match, but rather like he’d just met a historic legend in person —George Washington, maybe, or Michelangelo, or one of the heroes their Irish folklore professor was always talking about. “You’re incredible,” he said again. “You’re going to change the world. I hope I’m there to see it.”

Adam blinked. Then he blinked again and tilted his good ear toward Gansey, like only having one functioning ear had somehow distorted Gansey’s actual words. “You’re a Gansey,” he said finally. “You were born to change the world.”

This time, Gansey’s smile was like the sun returning to life after a fierce thunderstorm. “Who knows?” he said. “Maybe we’ll change the world together. Would you like to go out for pizza with me and Ronan?”

Adam squinted at him, trying to figure out if he was on the receiving end of an elaborate prank. But Gansey didn’t seem like the pranking type—and anyway, he was using his genuine voice, the one that was unaccented in the same way that Adam’s college voice was unaccented, and his smile was more real than the one he trained on teachers and acquaintances and old enemies alike. So even though Adam had a test the next day, and even though his budget required him to eat every meal at a dining hall, Adam smiled back at Gansey and agreed. 

Dinner was nothing like Adam had expected either. Gansey and Ronan ate greasy pizzas like they were normal college boys and not forces of nature, and they flitted from one topic of conversation to the next like normal college boys as well. Adam didn’t know why he had expected them to be different. To be— _more_ , somehow. And in all fairness, they were, in a way. Something about Gansey made Adam understand why so many people admired him, why teachers bent rules for him and students offered him favors before he even asked. Adam felt like a dimming lightbulb next to Gansey’s sun, and he also couldn’t bring himself to fault Gansey for that. 

And then there was Ronan. Adam squirmed under the scrutiny of Ronan’s stares and made faces when Ronan hit him with paper footballs and couldn’t stop himself from laughing when Ronan told jokes and accepted Ronan’s extra pizza and most of Ronan’s ice cream sundae even though Adam hated handouts and condescension. As friendly as Gansey was, Adam knew that any present Gansey tried to give him would come off as pity and charity, and Adam wouldn’t be able to stand that. But Ronan handed over the extra food that he’d bought anyway and couldn’t finish, and he did it with such nonchalance that it somehow seemed okay. Adam was instantly suspicious of him. 

Despite these quirks, Adam was more at ease with them than he would have expected, mostly because Gansey worked hard to make him feel that way, and by the time he climbed out of the Pig and into his dorm room, he actually believed the sincerity of Gansey’s offer of friendship. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Blue crossed her arms and stared Adam down while he brushed his teeth. “Walton boys? Really?”

Adam spit toothpaste into the sink and rinsed his mouth out before turning around and crossing his arms right back. “They’re not that bad,” he said defensively. “Besides, we need other friends, Blue.”

“No we don’t,” Blue said, rolling her eyes as she flounced back to their dorm room. When she had asked Adam if he wanted to be her roommate, he had been more surprised that she wanted to room with him than that their college allowed coed rooms, and he’d been plenty surprised by that. After their awkward attempt at a relationship had gone south last year, Adam had sort of assumed that she’d want to put some distance between them once they got to college. Of course, when he’d expressed that, she’d scoffed and said that just because he was an idiot didn’t mean that he wasn’t her best friend, and then Adam couldn’t exactly say no. 

“Come on, Blue,” Adam said. “I need people to sit with in my seminar and Latin class. And since you insist on studying ecology, the least you could do is come meet them at dinner tomorrow. Who knows, you might actually not hate them.”

Blue snorted. “Unlikely,” she said, but Adam knew that was her version of agreement. “Don’t blame me when I call them out for being rich privileged assholes and they run crying to their multimillionaire parents and then stop talking to you.”

“I won’t,” Adam promised, patting her on the head and laughing when she swatted at him. “But seriously, I think they’re actually okay.”

Of course, the next morning Gansey called him and said something had come up and he and Ronan were going out of town for the weekend. It was hard to feel resentful when Gansey sounded genuinely apologetic, so Adam agreed to grab dinner with them on Tuesday instead. But when Tuesday rolled around, neither Gansey nor Ronan were in class, and neither of them answered their phones either. Adam tried to convince himself that they weren’t avoiding him, but his mind immediately jumped to every uncultured, embarrassing thing he’d done the week before and made the conclusion before he could stop it. That night, Blue adamantly asserted their asshole-ness and toasted Adam’s future better friends with a shot of vodka while Adam snorted into his water, and then he tried to put Gansey’s fickle attempt at friendship behind him. 

Except neither of them were in class on Thursday, either, and after asking around, Adam quickly found out that they hadn’t attended a single class that week. On Friday night, Blue quietly questioned her assertion of their asshole-ness and toasted to Adam’s hope that nothing was seriously wrong. 

The following Tuesday, Gansey was back in their writing seminar, but his eyes were empty as he greeted classmates with his signature Richard Campbell Gansey III smile. Adam still doubted the reality of a potential friendship between them, but watching Gansey walk out of class without Ronan at his side made Adam’s mouth dry. Before he could second-guess himself, he scooped his messenger bag off the floor and slid next to Gansey’s other side. 

“Hey,” he said, for lack of anything else to say. 

Gansey startled and whipped around towards Adam, face caught in a mixture of deep thought and surprise. It was the least composed Adam had ever seen him, but Gansey smoothed the expression over in half a moment, replacing the surprise with concern. “Christ,” Gansey said as he stared at Adam. “We were supposed to get dinner last week.”

It wasn’t what Adam had expected. “Yes?”

“Christ,” Gansey said again, and now he was beginning to look genuinely distressed, and forget it,  _this_  was the least composed Adam had ever seen him. “I am so sorry. I can’t believe I forgot. I hope you didn't—Jesus  _Christ_ , I’m so—”

“Gansey,” Adam interrupted, a little alarmed, “it was just dinner at the dining hall. It’s fine.”

“It is not,” Gansey said indignantly. “I told you we would be there, and I never called you to tell you we couldn’t make it, let alone offer you an explanation, and after I’d already cancelled on you once. It was inexcusably rude of me.”

Adam blinked. “About that. Are you okay?”

Gansey cut off mid-apology and tilted his head curiously. “Why would you ask that? You’re the one who must feel slighted.”

Actually, Adam was feeling less and less slighted as the conversation continued, but he waved that aside. “You missed school for a week, Gansey. Ronan still isn’t back. So, are you okay?”

Gansey’s apologetic smile froze in place, and Adam was more concerned by it than he would have been if Gansey had shown any kind of real emotion. “I’m not the one who you should be asking. I… Please don’t tell anyone about this because it’s extremely personal, but—we do owe you an explanation. Ronan’s father was murdered last Sunday.”

Adam felt himself flit through several emotions in rapid succession, everything from shock to horror to worry to guilt for being so petty about feeling ignored. He settled on bewilderment—bewilderment at what it might be like, having a father that you didn’t want to lose. He pulled a Richard Campbell Gansey III and made sure not to let that particular emotion show on his face, however. “That’s awful,” he said finally. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

Gansey ran his hands over the seam of his khakis and sighed. “I’ll let you know if I figure it out myself,” he said softly. “I’m sorry that the timing is so awful. I don’t want you to think I’m ignoring you.”

That feeling of guilt came rushing back. “Don’t be sorry,” Adam said firmly. “We can hang out when you have time.”

The relief on Gansey’s face was brief but genuine. “Thank you,” he said with a hopeless smile, and Adam left before he said something insensitive and ruined it. 

That night, Blue fully and sadly rescinded her assertion of their asshole-ness. 

One week later, Ronan banged his way into their seminar’s lecture hall, and Adam couldn’t help wondering if her original judgment was deserved after all. 

At first glance, Ronan looked the same. But on closer inspection, he didn’t look the same at all. Instead of an Irish band t-shirt, he was wearing a black tank top with something obscene printed on the back. His expensive jeans now had angry holes torn into them, looking somewhere between distressed and destroyed. His dark curly hair was gone, shaved into oblivion, and the resulting buzz cut only accentuated the sharpness of the rest of his features. Worst of all, though, was his face. Before, Ronan’s eyes had been piercing but curious, and he had always worn the hint of an amused smile, like the world was highly entertaining or entirely boring or both. Now his mouth was frozen in a sneer, like the world was entirely boring and also full of idiots, and the only light in his eyes was barely restrained fury. Those eyes skated over Adam’s face without a hint of recognition. When they settled on Gansey’s, Ronan’s sneer molded into a scowl, and he dropped into his chair with clenched fists and furrowed eyebrows. It was only because those fists were clenched that Adam caught sight of Ronan’s bloody knuckles. He smelled faintly of alcohol. Adam thought he might be sick. 

Ronan didn’t improve as the class went on. He’d always cared very little about their discussions, but now he was adamantly antagonistic about it. Instead of answering carelessly when the teacher called on him, he offered up glares and insults and no actual answer to the question, no matter how simple. He tore papers into scraps that he turned into balls and methodically threw at Gansey’s head while he tried to take notes. And when class ended and a few poor idiots tried to talk to him, Ronan cursed at them so thoroughly that all of them stepped back and at least one of them cried. 

At first glance, Ronan Lynch was back, but Adam wasn’t actually sure that he had returned after all. 

* * *

As the week progressed and Ronan steadfastly continued to ignore him and Gansey shot apologetic glances at him every time he passed by, Adam tried to put the pair out of his mind. He didn’t even know Ronan, not really, and he certainly wasn’t equipped to handle a pissed-off, grieving asshole. He couldn’t imagine himself joining Gansey again any time soon, and he wasn’t even sure he  _wanted_  to join Ronan anymore—not if this was how he was going to act. Adam had enough pissed-off assholes in his life already. 

And then it was late Friday afternoon, Adam was biking back to the dorms from his part-time job at a car garage, and a shark-gray BMW blew around a corner and almost ran him over. A combination of experienced reflexes, a last-minute swerve of the BMW, and total blind luck managed to save Adam’s life. They did not, however, save him or his bike from getting injured, as the bike flipped on its side, skidded for a solid twenty feet, and took Adam with it. 

“Hey, shithead!” the driver called out. “Ride in the fucking shoulder!”

“I was!” Adam called out, gritting his teeth. “You’re the one who was driving in the fucking shoulder!”

A mop of perfectly trimmed brown hair stuck out of the passenger window, and then that mop turned to the side and Richard Campbell Gansey III stared with  open horror at the sight in front of him. “ _Adam?_ ”

“ _Gansey?_ ”

In half a second, Gansey was running out of the car and helping Adam stand up and assessing the damage to him and his bike, eyes wide and disturbed. “Jesus Christ,” he said, which seemed to be the only thing that he said to Adam anymore. “I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”

For a moment, Adam was too busy flexing his scraped-up elbows and peering at his ruined tires to answer. Then Gansey’s unceasing apologies blurred into a indistinct murmur that paled in comparison to the roaring in Adam’s good ear, and he ran over and flung open the driver’s side door of the BMW against his better judgment. Unsurprisingly, Ronan Lynch was inside. The sight of his shaved head and ripped jeans was almost enough to make Adam reconsider the words on the tip of his tongue—and then Ronan opened his mouth. “Did I ruin that shitty dollar-store bike of yours?”

Adam saw red. “I don’t know, I was too busy making sure I wasn’t dead to check. Did almost killing me and crashing your precious fucking car convince you not to drive when you’re shit-faced drunk?”

Ronan rolled his eyes. “I’m not shit-faced drunk,” he said, “I'm  _fucking_  shit-faced drunk.”

“Oh, because that's  _so much better_ ,” Adam seethed. “Look, it might not bother you if being ‘fucking shit-faced drunk’ ends with your head through a windshield, but some of us have to go to work tomorrow, which will be kind of difficult with a bike that’s now not only shitty and from a dollar-store but also fucking  _broken_.”

“I’ll drive you,” Ronan said, unconcerned. 

Adam scoffed. “Yeah, like I’d ever get in the passenger seat of a car you’re driving after tonight.”

“I’ll drive you,” Gansey spoke up from where he was righting Adam’s bike and carefully avoiding both of their eyes. “Assuming that the Pig starts.”

“Like your judgment is any better!” Adam said, whirling around. “Why the  _hell_  would you allow Ronan to drive when he’s this drunk, let alone get into the car with him?" 

"He was going to do it either way,” Gansey said apologetically, “and there aren’t enough places in our suite for me to hide his keys. I figured it was more irresponsible to let him go alone. Obviously, I did not see this coming, or I would have tried to think of an alternative.”

Suddenly, Adam remembered that these were people he wanted to be friends with and that Gansey was not the kind of person that one wanted to insult. A little of the red faded from his vision and crept onto his neck instead. “It’s fine,” he muttered. “I can probably fix it if I take it back to the garage and get my tools back out.”

“How far away is your garage?”

Adam shrugged. “A mile or two.”

Gansey’s eyes widened with horror for the second time in as many minutes. “What? You can’t walk back all that way. Let us give you a ride.”

Adam blinked. “Did you forget that I literally just said that under no circumstances would I be getting a ride from either of you anytime soon? My friend Blue has a car. I’ll call her.”

Ronan stuck his head out the window and drawled, “If you’re going to be that stupid about this, you can drive.”

Gansey dropped Adam’s bike on the asphalt, making Adam wince. “You’re going to let Adam  _drive_?”

Ronan shrugged. “Why not? You do know how to drive, don’t you, Parrish?”

“I’m a mechanic,” Adam pointed out. “And I’m definitely a better driver than you are, especially tonight.”

“See?”

“But—you don’t let  _me_  drive.” Gansey sounded rather bemused. 

“That’s because you won’t let me drive the Pig,” Ronan pointed out. “Adam doesn’t have a car that I’m not allowed to drive. I’m sure as hell not interested in his fucking bike.”

Gansey tilted his head, looking between  Adam and Ronan quizzically, and then—slowly—smiled. “Well. All right then.”

And before he’d quite caught up with the conversation, Adam found himself behind the steering wheel of a car that cost more than his college tuition. Ronan rested his head against the passenger side window, looking strangely lazy and slightly angry and extremely drunk, and when Adam peeked in the rearview mirror, Gansey appeared to be calm and content in the backseat. It made Adam nervous. 

“So,” Gansey started, and Adam braced himself for something dangerous—an invasive question, an unintentionally condescending remark about his bike, a rebuke for his rude comments to Ronan. But what he said was, “We were on our way to get dinner when we… saw you. Would you like to join us? We’re pretty overdue on that rain check.”

Adam carefully shifted into gear, frowning. “I told you, I have to go see if I can fix my bike.”

“Of course,” Gansey said. “We’ll wait for you. It’s our fault that you’re inconvenienced, after all.”

Adam wanted to point out that if his bike really was irreparably damaged, it would be a lot worse than an _inconvenience_. But he noticed that Gansey said “our fault” instead of placing all of the blame on Ronan, and for that, Adam drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and considered. “I’ll just drop the bike off, then,” he said finally. “It’s getting too late to bother with it anyway. I’ll look at it tomorrow.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that on our account—”

“It’s fine,” Adam promised. “Are we going to the same pizza place as last time?”

When he looked in the rearview mirror again, Gansey was smiling. 

Ten minutes later, he pulled Adam aside while Ronan was getting them a table and said, “I don’t know how you got him to do that, but I’m grateful.”

Adam frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“That BMW?” Gansey said. “It was Ronan’s father’s. He didn’t even let his older brother drive it. Of course, he hates his older brother, but still. When he wanted to go for a drive, there wasn’t much I could do but go along with it. Thank you for driving instead.”

Adam shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged uncomfortably. “I didn’t really do anything.”

“Apparently, you didn’t really have to,” Gansey said. 

Anything else he might have said was interrupted by Ronan waving them over to a booth. Adam slid in next to Gansey, doing his best to ignore Ronan’s piercing (if still slightly drunken) glare, and ordered water and pizza before noticing that Gansey was also looking at him piercingly. Adam looked back at him and frowned. “What?”

Gansey drummed his fingers on the table. “Adam, what do you know about Welsh kings?”

“About as much as our professor has told us,” Adam said. “Why, are you working on a project about them?”

Gansey smiled. “You could say that.”

* * *

Their second dinner together was more surreal than the first had been. Adam listened incredulously as Gansey told him stories of hornets and death and Welsh kings and impossible progress he’d made in his impossible quest. Adam would have thought they were playing a particularly cruel joke on him if he didn’t see the way Ronan glared at him, silently daring him to voice his disbelief. And Gansey looked so hopeful and pleased as he talked that Adam couldn’t bring himself to meet Ronan’s dare. Instead, Adam nodded along and inserted helpful comments and tried his best to mean them. And in return, Gansey grinned delightedly and Ronan didn’t say much of anything, but he shoved in front of Adam in line and paid for both their meals, and when Adam tried to protest, his only response was, “I crashed your bike, Parrish, take the fucking free food,” and there wasn’t much Adam could say to that. 

Two days later—after Adam went back to work and verified that his bike was fixable—he invited them to coffee at the shop where Blue worked, and they agreed to come. 

(Actually, Ronan didn’t respond, but Gansey said that his coffee machine was a nightmare and they’d both be happy to be there, and Adam decided to be forgiving enough to believe him.)

Blue was delighted when they showed up and headed straight for the cash register where Adam was standing. “Time to find out how asshole-ish they really are,” she said excitedly, and Adam tried to force himself not to regret this particular decision. 

In her defense, Blue was perfectly nice to them. She grinned when Gansey introduced himself and Ronan as Adam’s friends and didn’t even judge him (much) when he ordered a caramel macchiato with skim milk. But then Gansey politely asked how much the coffees would cost, and Blue laughed and zeroed out the transaction. “Friends of Adam are friends of mine,” she said. When Gansey still looked baffled, she clarified, “I get three free drinks a day.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Gansey protested. “I can afford to pay.”

Instantly, Blue went rigid. “Well,” she said, arching one eyebrow, “if you can  _afford_  to…” And she rang up their drinks again—this time without zeroing out the total. Gansey handed her his credit card with something approaching terror and hauled Adam off to the side while Blue made their drinks. 

“What happened?” he asked in a panic. “What did I do?”

Adam stared at him. “You offended her.”

“But how?” Gansey asked, looking truly regretful. “I didn’t want her to give up her free drinks for me. It hardly seemed fair." 

Adam almost laughed. "It’s what baristas  _do_ , Gansey. They give free drinks to their friends because they can. She was being  _nice_.”

“Oh,” Gansey said. “I didn’t realize. What should I do now? Should I apologize? Should I buy her flowers?”

Of course, Blue walked over to hand them their drinks then and caught the tail end of their conversation. “I don’t know, Gansey,” she said, setting their drinks down harder than was strictly necessary, “can you  _afford_  to?”

Gansey looked appropriately horrified. 

But as he spluttered, Ronan cracked a smile that was only half a sneer, Adam laughed out loud, and even Blue grinned. Gansey actually did end up buying her flowers, and the bouquet was so absurdly extravagant that Blue laughed her way out of being offended. 

The next time they went to Blue’s coffee shop, Gansey let her give him a free drink and told her about Welsh kings, and Blue didn’t look nearly as skeptical about the possibility of finding a lost tomb as Adam had expected her to. 

And suddenly, they were all friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr: [@actuallymollyweasley](http://actuallymollyweasley.tumblr.com)


	3. Failed Sketches

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, love and praise goes to my beta [@pygmytyrants](http://pygmytyrants.tumblr.com)
> 
> Also, just a general note for this fic: please don't ever use ronan's behavior as a good role model for how to live your life. he is obviously going through some things and not processing them in a very healthy manner.

The professor of one of Ronan’s introductory art classes was a little absurd, and she’d told them the first day that their art pieces for the semester would be centered around “ _emotion_ , my young  _artists_ —the center of human  _existence_ , our  _reason_  for  _being_.” Ronan had told Gansey about her and laughed, and Gansey had laughed too. Dr. Azalea’s first major assignment had asked her students to create a representation of something that made them happy. Ronan had laughed again at the simplicity of the project and talked about it with Gansey the night they first got dinner with Adam. Ronan had mentioned pizza boxes and sunsets at the Barns and Gansey had mentioned ice cream and orange Camaros and both of them had laughed some more. It had seemed so easy. 

Then Ronan’s dad died, and Ronan’s mother stopped speaking to anyone, and Declan shipped Matthew off to an expensive boarding school and Aurora off to an expensive mental hospital because no one was allowed to live at the Barns anymore—something about caveats in the will and unpaid debts and expectant buyers who were planning on looking for items of interest in the Barns to make up for the purchases that Niall Lynch hadn’t delivered before his death. Ronan had burned and raged at the idiotic lawyers Declan had hired, but in the end, all he could do was steal his father’s BMW (it was given to him in the will, but Ronan felt better about leaving the Barns if he told himself he was committing a crime while he did) in the middle of the night and drive back to college in unstoppable anger. 

Dr. Azalea’s assignment was due in two weeks, and Ronan had forgotten what happiness felt like. 

“You can do it, Ronan,” Gansey said one day after finding Ronan staring at a blank canvas in their kitchen for the fifth day in a row. “It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. You just have to paint something that—”

“Shut the fuck up, Dick,” Ronan said furiously. “Don’t talk to me about art.”

And then he stormed out of the suite to go get shit-faced drunk again. 

Nine hours later, he burst into Gansey’s room (Ronan might not let anyone into his room, but that didn’t mean he had any reservations about invading other people’s privacy) and refused to let himself feel guilty when he saw that Gansey was actually sleeping for once. This was his fault, after all. “All right, Gansey,” he said harshly, dropping a canvas onto his best friend’s chest. “Now you can talk to me about art.”

To his credit, Gansey didn’t throw Ronan out of his room at the rude interruption. Instead, he perched his old-man glasses on his nose and looked down at what Ronan had somewhat generously dubbed “art.”

It was a drunken disaster, and Ronan knew it. 

He watched with savage satisfaction as Gansey looked in vain for something to compliment. A widening trail of half-rendered beer bottles and lopsided shot glasses culminated in the scene of a car accident—a shark-gray BMW smashed into a telephone pole, blue and red and white police lights flashing in the background. Ronan hadn’t bothered with precise lines or accurate shading. The whole thing was blotchy and listed slightly to one side, even though Ronan had made sure the original composition was decent—he wanted to give the  _appearance_  of trying while actually not giving a fuck. It was the ugliest thing Ronan had made in years, and he couldn’t wait for Gansey to try to be nice about it. 

Gansey surprised him. The first thing out of his mouth was, “Please tell me that this isn’t a representation of what happened to you tonight.”

“No,” Ronan said, mildly affronted. “It’s for class.”

There was a pause. “What.”

“You told me to paint something that seemed happy,” Ronan said. “I got drunk, and this suddenly seemed hilarious. Painting it was fun. Now I’m happy.”

Gansey carefully set Ronan’s latest atrocity to the side, stuck a mint leaf into his mouth, and sighed. “Go to sleep, Lynch.”

“Not a chance,” Ronan said, and went back out. He’d painted for so long that he didn’t feel nearly drunk enough anymore. 

* * *

Gansey talked to Dr. Azalea. 

Ronan wasn’t exactly sure what he said, but it involved something along the lines of “father passed away recently” and “emotionally unstable” and “maybe not the best time to ask him to paint happiness”. Money may have changed hands. Ronan didn’t much care. What mattered was that Dr. Azalea pulled him aside after his next class and told him gently, if a bit eccentrically, that he had an unlimited extension on his current assignment and just had to turn it in before the end of the semester. And that only mattered because it meant that he wouldn’t fail his first art class. 

Because if he was in danger of failing, Ronan knew that Declan would drive down from D.C., and much too little time had passed for Ronan to see his older brother again. 

* * *

Ronan’s next art assignment was about anger. He didn’t know if Dr. Azalea had chosen the emotion because of him or not, but it made him attack his next canvas with savage glee. 

Ronan could do anger. 

* * *

Except maybe he couldn’t. 

Ronan painted more car crashes and drunken brawls and empty beer bottles. He sketched bricks through broken windows and bloody knuckles and leather jackets made out of swear words. He stole clay from a classmate and sculpted middle fingers and clenched fists and broken pottery shards, and he hated all of it. None of it fit the prompt to Ronan’s liking. None of it encompassed everything that was tearing him up inside. None of it reflected the way he felt about the lawyers who were keeping him out of the Barns and his older brother who was keeping him away from his mother and the fucking unnamed murderer murderer murderer who had killed his father. 

None of it was enough. 

Then, one day, Ronan took all of his failed sketches and paintings and sculptures and stuffed them into a plastic bag. He grabbed a matchbox and some shitty alcohol and Gansey and went out to the Pig and looked at Gansey expectantly. 

Gansey looked back at him. “You want me to drive?”

Ronan nodded. 

“Where are we going?”

Ronan smiled. “Somewhere fires aren’t illegal.”

“I’m surprised you care about legality.”

“Only because I figured you wouldn’t come if we were doing something illegal.”

Now Gansey was smiling too. “Why would you assume that?”

They went out to an empty dirt road, Ronan dumped his scrapped projects into a pile, Gansey poured whiskey over all of them, and Ronan lit a match and set them on fire. Together, they drank the rest of the whiskey and watched Ronan’s failures go up in flames. Then Gansey drove them back while Ronan leaned against his window with his eyes closed, his mind still blazing with the memory of the inferno they’d created. He didn’t say a word to Gansey for the whole drive—just went up to his room in silence and shut the door behind him. 

And finally, finally, finally, he started to draw. 

This time, the crumpled papers and scratched-out designs didn’t frustrate him. He knew that they were only by-products of something worthwhile, so he scribbled and sketched and traced and erased until that something worthwhile appeared on the page. 

The final product was all ink and anguish and rage rage rage, with screaming ravens and thorny vines and menacing branches and flowers and feathers with jagged edges like warning signs, and it was almost perfect. But still Ronan stared and stared and stared, wondering what was wrong with it, until he fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion. 

By the time he woke up, he had missed two classes, and he knew. 

It needed a different canvas. 

* * *

Eight hours later, Ronan walked into Dr. Azalea’s office. 

“You missed this morning’s class,” she said, barely glancing up from the thumbnail sketches she was inspecting. 

Ronan shrugged. “I was working on your assignment. I’m ready to hand it in now.”

Dr. Azalea raised her eyebrows at his empty hands. “Are you?”

Ronan nodded, turned around, and tugged his shirt over his head. 

Dr. Azalea was silent for a moment before saying, “How do I know that you’re the one who designed that?”

Ronan held back a retort, offended that she even needed to ask. This was  _him_. This was  _his_  work. How dare she think anyone else could have made this? 

“I still have the draft sketches and the final inked design on paper,” he said out loud. “I’ll bring them to class tomorrow if you want.”

He could hear her tapping her fingernails on her desk. “Do that,” she said slowly. “And have someone take a picture of your tattoo so I can look at it more closely. And Ronan?”

“What?”

“You are going to take care of that, aren’t you? You can’t leave it unbandaged like this. You’ll get an infection.”

Ronan slammed the door when he left. 

* * *

Another hour passed before he dropped a paper bag on Gansey’s desk and waited for him to come in. 

* * *

Another ninety minutes passed before Gansey did, looking frazzled and decidedly un-Gansey-like with his hair mussed and his polo shirt untucked. He bypassed his desk and went straight for his keys, forcing Ronan to bang his fist on the back of a chair to get his attention. 

It worked a little too well. Gansey whirled around and almost smacked into the edge of his dresser. “ _Ronan_?" 

Ronan just stared at him.  _Yes,_ he thought, _obviously, Ronan._

After a moment of surprise, Gansey’s eyes narrowed. "Where have you  _been_?” he demanded. 

“Out.”

But for once, Gansey didn’t accept his one-word answer. “I haven’t seen you since last  _night_ , Ronan. You didn’t attend a  _single class_ today.  _Nobody’s_  seen you. We’ve been looking for you for  _hours_. So I’ll ask you again,  _where have you_ —?”

“We?” Ronan interrupted, just as someone burst into their suite. 

“Gansey, I checked Nino’s and three different ABC stores and he wasn’t at any of them. Blue says his car was back when she went to park, though, so he must be back on campus n—Oh.” Adam stopped dead in the entrance to Gansey’s room. “You’re back.”

Ronan stared at Gansey again. “You enlisted Parrish to go looking for me?” he said incredulously. “And  _Sargent_?”

“You’ve been missing all day,” Gansey said in his disappointed-parent voice. “I’d like an explanation now.”

In response, Ronan tugged his shirt off again. 

“You’re going to have to help me clean it,” he admitted when Gansey didn’t say anything for over a minute. “It’s supposed to be washed and bandaged and shit, and I can’t reach it all.”

Gansey’s voice was soft when he asked, “How long did that take?”

“To design? Maybe six hours.”

“And to get?”

“Seven and a half.”

“But…” Ronan was almost amused to hear how much Gansey was struggling with words. It was probably a new experience for him. “ _Why_ , Ronan?”

“It’s my art assignment. The anger one.”

“And you decided to get your art assignment tattooed on your back because—”

Ronan shrugged, carefully casual. “It didn’t look right on paper.”

With a huff of confusion or frustration or annoyance or some combination of the three, Gansey left his room. Ronan knew that it’d take at least thirty minutes for him to come back, which was a shame because his back was starting to itch. 

“You said your assignment was about anger?”

Now it was Ronan’s turn to spin around and almost hit Gansey’s dresser. He’d forgotten that Adam was still standing there, dusty and stubbornly interesting in Gansey’s doorway. 

“Yes.”

“Huh.”

Ronan waited. When Adam seemed content to stare at him without saying anything else, Ronan growled, “Spit it out, Parrish.”

Adam leaned against Gansey’s doorpost and said, “If I was your teacher, I’d fail you.”

Ronan clenched his hands into fists. “Excuse me?”

“Your art was supposed to portray anger. But that tattoo isn’t all anger. It’s just—you.”

“Newsflash, Parrish,” Ronan said. “I’m all anger.”

“No. No, I don’t think you are." 

Then Adam turned and left. 

_That tattoo isn’t all anger. It’s just—you._

Ronan stayed up thinking about that long after Gansey came back and dressed his tattoo, now recovered enough to compliment the intricacy of the design. In the end, he decided that Adam Parrish had to be fucking crazy. Because if Ronan wasn’t all anger, then what the fuck was he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come cry about trc with me on [tumblr](http://actuallymollyweasley.tumblr.com)


	4. Not Like That

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for this chapter include mentions of blood, abuse, and attempted suicide. If any of that is triggering for you, there's a link to my tumblr in the end notes. Please don't hesitate to shoot me an ask so I can send you a summary of the chapter. 
> 
> As always, much love goes out to [@pygmytyrants](http://pygmytyrants.tumblr.com) for making sure my chapters aren't a mess!

After the first time, when Ronan vanished for several hours to make art and then inexplicably decide to ink it permanently onto his own skin, Adam got used to his disappearances and Gansey's ceaseless worry that they meant something terrible had happened to him. So when Gansey knocked frantically on the door to his dorm one Tuesday night while Blue was out of town for a cousin's wedding, Adam opened the door with nothing more urgent than resignation. 

"How long has he been gone this—?"

The look on Gansey's face stopped Adam in his tracks. 

It wasn't just his imperfectly styled hair or untucked shirt or wire-rimmed glasses—those were becoming reoccurring side effects of looking for Ronan. It was those things combined with blank horror in his eyes and an absolute lack of color in his skin that made Adam take a step back to grab his shoes. 

"You didn't answer your phone," Gansey said finally, voice thick as Adam stuffed his feet into scuffed sneakers. 

"I was studying," Adam said warily, apologetically, worriedly. "What happened?"

He swallowed hard, the movement contorting his entire face. "Ronan disappeared again. I went out to see if he'd taken his car. When I came back to the dorm..." He closed his eyes. "He was in the living room. Covered in blood."

Adam froze halfway through tying his shoelaces. "His own blood?" 

Gansey nodded. 

"Jesus Christ."

"I know," Gansey whispered. "His wrists... God, Adam."

"Is he at the hospital now?"

Gansey nodded again. 

"Do you need me to drive?"

Hesitation, then another nod. 

"Okay," Adam said, willing his hands not to shake, willing his voice to remain steady. When it came to Ronan, Gansey always misplaced a little of the composure that made him into Richard Campbell Gansey III, but tonight he seemed to have lost it all. And Adam couldn't blame him. Tonight, he had to be the composed one. 

"Let's go."

* * *

Waiting in the hospital was agony. Adam had a math exam the next day, but he couldn't force himself to focus on differential equations when Gansey had his fists clenched in the hem of his polo shirt and looked quietly terrified. 

"I haven't been in a hospital in seven years," he finally said, two hours after they'd arrived. 

Adam winced. "Since you..."

"Since I died, yes," Gansey said matter-of-factly. "I had rather hoped I wouldn't be seeing one again for quite some time."

Adam reached under the collar of his t-shirt and rubbed two crooked scars on his shoulder. "I've been in the hospital a few times," he admitted. Gansey's words seemed like the sort of truth that deserved another truth in return. 

Gansey clucked his tongue. "Accident-prone?"

The scars burned, just for a moment, and Adam saw flying beer bottles and his father, shouting so drunkenly that spit landed on Adam's face and Adam's hair and Adam's shoulder where the beer bottle had hit and broken and made him bleed. 

"Something like that." Adam hesitated, then added, "The last time was a year and a half ago, when I lost hearing in my ear."

"Oh no," Gansey frowned. "You weren't born like that?" Adam shook his head. "May I ask what happened?"

Adam took a deep breath. 

_My father pushed me down the stairs._

_My father kept beating me after I hit the ground, even though my head was ringing and I couldn't catch my breath. The ringing didn't stop._

_My father beat me almost every day. Something had to break eventually._

"I fell down the stairs," he said finally. "Hit my head on the corner of the railing." Not technically a lie. And he felt like he'd given up enough truths for one night. 

"And when you got up, you couldn't hear out of one ear," Gansey finished in a whisper, tugging at his own ear. "That must have been awful. I wish..." He shook his head. "Not that I would have done much good anyway. I obviously haven't been any help to Ronan."

"Gansey." Adam furrowed his eyebrows. "You can't actually blame yourself for this."

Gansey buried his face in his hands. It somehow made him look three years younger and thirty years older all at once. "Ronan had this art assignment due a few weeks ago about happiness. I got him an extension because it would have been awful to make him complete it, but before I did, Ronan got drunk and painted a car wreck and gave it to me."

This sounded like typical Ronan behavior. "And this somehow makes tonight your fault?"

Gansey's voice was muffled when he said, "It was his car that was wrecked, Adam. His own car smashed into a telephone pole and surrounded by police lights, and Ronan said that the painting made him happy. How did I—how did I ignore that? How could I have just gone back to sleep after hearing that? Why didn't I make him stay and talk to me? He said that crashing his own car would have made him happy, and I just went back to sleep."

Adam closed his eyes and leaned back in the hard hospital chair. He'd never been in a hospital like this before—a helpless visitor instead of a patient. He wondered if it had been like this for Blue, when he lost hearing in his ear and couldn't see much but colors and stars and had so little balance that the paramedics thought he was drunk. As if Adam would drink after everything his father had done. 

Looking back on it, Adam thought he preferred being the patient. 

"Don't do this, Gansey," he said finally. "Don't blame yourself for what Ronan did. Or else I'll have to start blaming myself for every time I threw his words back in his face, and Blue will have to start blaming herself for every time she insulted him before he had a chance to do it first, and none of us will be in any shape to make sure this doesn't happen again when Ronan gets out."

There was a moment where Adam thought Gansey hadn't heard him, or didn't want to. But then he straightened in his chair and fixed his crooked glasses and patted down his hair, and Adam could see the exact moment that Gansey painted composure onto his face with a practiced hand. "Of course," he said firmly. "You're right." 

There was a pause. 

"There was just so much blood, Adam."

They sat in silence for hours before they were allowed to see Ronan. 

(And that was only because Gansey was listed as his emergency contact, which didn't surprise Adam at all but certainly surprised Gansey.)

He looked paler than usual with bandages wrapped up the length of his forearms. The lines of his tattoo stood out harshly against his skin. The first thing out of his mouth was, "Please tell me you didn't call Declan."

Adam knew that Gansey had been too much in shock to call pretty much anyone, except him—a thought which brought a sudden stab of amazement to his gut—but he was glad when Gansey said, "So what if I did? It would have been justified."

Ronan gritted his teeth. "Gansey, you better not have called Declan."

"This is serious, Ronan. You can't brush it off as another harmless stunt. You—" Gansey took a deep breath. "You almost  _killed yourself_."

Ronan scowled. "It wasn't like that."

" _It wasn't like that?_ " Gansey repeated. "Do you really expect me to believe that? What were you trying to do, then, make more  _art_?"

" _No_ ," Ronan said, clenching his hands into fists. Adam thought he saw a wince when the movement tugged at Ronan's stitches, but he didn't back down. "I wasn't—I didn't—Look, I didn't have a knife with me, did I?"

Apparently, Gansey had missed that detail when he'd discovered Ronan's unconscious bleeding body. Adam could tell by the way his eyes widened slightly. But he quickly rallied and said, "Okay. Okay, fine. If you want me to believe that this isn't what it looks like, how did it happen, then?"

Ronan opened his mouth, paused, and then closed it again. Adam thought he saw a little anger fade out of his glare. 

Gansey's voice was tired when he said, "That's what I thought. Ronan, denial won't solve anything. You don't have to lie to us about this. Just—just know that we're here for you, all right? You don't have to resort to this."

Ronan slumped back against his pillows and closed his eyes. "Don't call Declan," he said again. "And get me out of this hospital. I hate having a fucking IV in my arm."

Gansey looked at Ronan for another moment before sighing and turning away. "I don't know why I thought this would change anything," he whispered to Adam as he left. 

If Ronan heard, he didn't give any indication. Adam watched him to check before swallowing hard and following Gansey out, feeling like a waste of a friend. 

He hadn't come up with a single word to say to Ronan the entire time he'd been in the room. 

* * *

The hospital wanted to keep Ronan there on suicide watch, but one homicidal glare from Ronan convinced Gansey that keeping him there would actually be detrimental to his mental health. He drove Adam back to college so Adam could take his math exam, and by the time Adam finished and biked back, Ronan was in the process of being discharged. Apparently, money had changed hands and some lawyer had made some contract that allowed Ronan to go back to college as long as he wasn't left alone for longer than an hour at a time and he met with the college counselor twice a week for at least a month and possibly longer, until she signed off on the stability of his mental well-being. As soon as he found out about it, Adam hated the entire exchange. He knew that Ronan would be left alone as much as Ronan wanted to be because Gansey was a pushover and Adam had work, and he knew that the college counselor wouldn't get a word out of Ronan that wasn't a swear and would sign off on his stability primarily out of fear—if another bribe didn't do the trick first. But Ronan's glare lessened from homicidal to merely threatening after they left the hospital, so Adam figured it was probably for the best. 

Ronan's leather wristbands were so thoroughly soaked with blood that even Gansey hadn't allowed him to keep them, so instead Ronan chewed on the edge of his bandages all the way to Adam's garage. He couldn't afford to take off work, even for a possibly suicidal sort-of friend, so all Adam could do was catch whiffs of hospital antiseptic on his shirt and feel queasy and anxious for his whole shift. 

Gansey wasn't there to pick Adam up at the end of work—Adam hadn't actually expected him to be—so he biked back to his dorm alone and tried to study for a chem exam he had on Friday. Instead, his thoughts circled around bloody wristbands and angry glares and rumpled Ganseys and  _I didn't have a knife with me, did I?_ Finally, Adam gave up on chemistry and left. 

When he came back, Ronan was sitting outside his door. 

Adam frowned. "What are you doing here?"

"Gansey was being a Dick. I told him I was coming here so he'd let me leave the suite."

"And you actually did?"

Ronan stared him down. "He made me promise that you would call him to tell him I was here." He tossed Adam his phone before he could be annoyed at having to use his minutes up on Ronan's boredom. For a moment, Adam considered throwing Ronan's phone back and kicking him out so he could eat dinner and go to sleep, but something about the way Ronan chewed on his bandages as he waited made Adam sigh and place the call instead. 

Gansey's voice rang through the speaker after a single ring. "Ronan, it's been twenty minutes," he said severely. "The walk to Adam's dorm takes eight. You had better have a damn good reason for why it's taken this long to—"

"It's Adam," Adam interrupted. "I was out when he got here. That's why he hasn't called. Sorry."

"Oh." The tone of Gansey's voice changed completely, became polite and grateful and understanding. "No need to apologize for that, Adam. You're not the one who needs supervision. Are you sure you don't mind him being there for a while? I know he isn't the most... pleasant company at the moment."

Adam almost laughed. "Don't worry. I'm pretty sure I can handle his sunshine-y presence."

"Is Ronan listening?" Gansey protested. "Does he think I said that? If he's listening, tell him that I didn't say that!"

Adam still didn't laugh, but he did crack a smile. "Bye, Gansey."

When he ended the call, Ronan was staring at him, unimpressed. "'Sunshine-y?'"

"The sun-shiniest. Now get out of my way so I can unlock the door."

Ronan got out of the way. 

Adam unlocked the door and dropped his bags on his desk before realizing that being there took away the only unoccupied chair in the room, since Blue's was still full of sewing supplies and scraps of fabric. When he turned, Ronan was lying sprawled on Adam's bed, chewing on his bandages again. Seeing him there made Adam vaguely uncomfortable, but he couldn't very well tell Ronan to move when the only other place to sit was Blue's bed, which was the top bunk and therefore very difficult to sit on without hitting one's head on the ceiling. Blue only managed it because she was so tiny. 

Adam stared at him for another moment and then balled up one of his plastic bags and threw it at Ronan, who caught it with a typically dangerous smile. "A plastic bag? For me? You shouldn't have."

Adam rolled his eyes. "Open it."

Ronan opened it—and went very still when he saw the new leather wristbands nestled inside. There were three, of varying thicknesses and shades of brown. Adam hadn't bought anything that expensive and unnecessary and purely aesthetic in years. 

"What the fuck, Parrish?"

"If you keep chewing on your bandages like a dog, your stitches are going to get infected, and I don't really feel like staying up all night in a hospital again any time soon."

Silence. Then, "You didn't have to stay."

"I couldn't leave Gansey there alone," Adam pointed out. "You know how he is. He would have worried himself into a heart attack."

Ronan held up one of the wristbands and glared at it like it had personally offended him. "Fucking Gansey."

"You could be grateful," Adam pointed out. When Ronan raised his eyebrows, he added quickly, "To Gansey, not me. The wristbands are me paying you back for all the food you've bought me over the last few weeks."

Ronan narrowed his eyes. "I haven't bought you any food."

Adam snorted. "'I bought this milkshake even though I already ate six pieces of pizza,'" he mimicked. "'If you don't fucking drink it, Parrish, I'll throw it away.'"

Ronan glared some more, and now it was Adam's turn to offer an unimpressed stare in return. Finally, Ronan rolled his eyes, yanked the wristbands on, and looked away. 

Adam figured they were done talking. Ronan would sulk around for a few more minutes and then leave. Instead, he was taking a third bite of his sandwich when Ronan asked out of nowhere, "Why would a biochem major take a class on Irish folklore?" 

Adam carefully chewed and swallowed the bite in his mouth and then set his sandwich down. "Freshmen are required to take a writing seminar." 

"Yes, and an ambitious shithead as single-minded as you are would have taken the international healthcare or medical technology seminars. So why didn't you?" 

A sudden flash of annoyance clawed its way through Adam. "Why do you want to know so badly?" 

But Ronan just raised his eyebrows and waited, and finally Adam growled in frustration and said, "Everything else was full, okay?" 

Ronan frowned. "We could all register for classes at the same time." 

Adam glared at his dorm's dirty carpet. "I didn't know if I was going to be able to come here until three weeks before school started." 

"Why? You're so fucking annoyingly smart that there's no way they wait-listed you—" 

"Jesus Christ, do I have to spell it out for you? I didn't know if I was going to be able to afford to go. My last scholarship didn't come through until July 30th, and my job application wasn't accepted until August 1st. I'm sure someone living in Walton doesn't know what that's like." 

Ronan looked at him like he could see straight through to his soul. In that moment, Adam didn't doubt that he could. "Your parents aren't helping to pay for college, are they?" 

Adam looked away, remembering broken beer bottles and unyielding fists and splatters of blood and countless bruises bruises bruises until, finally, he sustained an injury that left no visible damage at all. "No," he said. "No, they're not."

He heard the plastic bag he'd given Ronan crinkling from somewhere behind him—it was hard to tell where without insight from his left ear. "Finish your fucking sandwich, Parrish."

Adam picked it up. "You're the one who asked."

After that, Ronan didn't attempt to start another conversation. Adam kept expecting him to get bored and leave, but Ronan seemed content to lay on Adam's bed and watch him eat dinner and hunch over his books again until somewhere around 1 a.m. Then he said, "Go to fucking sleep, Parrish."

Adam held his place in his chem textbook and twisted around in his chair. "Are you going back to Walton?"

"Go to fucking sleep, Parrish," Ronan repeated. 

Adam raised his eyebrows. "You're still on my bed."

Ronan got off the bed. 

"Are you going to sleep here?"

Silence. 

"Why?"

Ronan tugged at his new wristbands and said, "Gansey might freak out."

Adam frowned, but seeing that Ronan seemed disinclined to move, he sighed and said, "Well, I don't know if you're planning on sleeping in Blue's bed, but she's coming back at ten tomorrow, so you'd better be out of here by then if you don't want her to catch you."

Ronan snorted. "I'm not afraid of Sargent."

Adam shrugged and grabbed his bathroom tote and pajama pants to go take a shower. "Your mistake."

When he came back, Ronan was still there. Adam didn't know why he kept expecting him to leave. He eyed Ronan's ripped jeans and leather jacket and said, "Do you want to borrow some sweatpants or something?"

Ronan just backed towards Adam's desk and emphasized, "Go to fucking  _sleep_ , Parrish."

So Adam sighed and went to fucking sleep. 

By the time he woke up, Ronan was finally gone, and there was a weirdly expensive-looking pen on Adam's desk. It looked more like something Gansey would own than something Ronan would deign to touch, but seeing as Gansey hadn't been the one to invite himself into Adam's room last night, Adam sighed and texted Ronan. Maybe it was one of his fancy art supplies. 

_You left a pen here._

Then he texted Gansey,  _Sorry if Ronan freaked you out by not coming back last night. I tried to make him leave but. It's Ronan._

Miracle of miracles, Ronan was the one who answered first. Adam hadn't been sure that he even knew his own passcode. 

**keep it parrish it has ur germs on it now**

Adam rolled his eyes and was considering how to respond when Gansey texted,  **Don't worry, Adam. Ronan told me he was staying over while you were getting ready for bed. Would you like to get coffee this morning? I know Blue isn't back yet, but I can't get my coffee machine to function properly and I have class in an hour.**

 _Sure_ , Adam answered with a frown, promptly forgetting about answering Ronan. If he hadn't intended to give Gansey a heart attack, then why had he spent the night in Adam's room? Maybe he'd just been too lazy to walk back to Walton. But then why not just say that?

Adam distracted himself by testing out Ronan's pen. It wrote more smoothly than any of the five-cent pens that Adam had bought on sale two years ago and still hadn't run out of. He shrugged and pocketed it. 

If Ronan didn't want to keep the pen, that was his loss. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://actuallymollyweasley.tumblr.com)
> 
> Also, if you write me a nice comment there is a 200% chance that I will reread it about a dozen times and a 500% chance that I will love you forever. Just fyi.


	5. Lessons in Informality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gansey just wants to be a good friend. Blue tries her best not to like him for it. (She fails.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like the title I chose for this chapter, obviously, but I still feel it's important to note that its unofficial title is "Fun with Dick and Jane" because, well, it's all about Dick and Jane. Enjoy!
> 
> p.s. this is your weekly reminder that [@pygmytyrants](http://pygmytyrants.tumblr.com) is a great beta

Blue hated talking on the phone.

She hated how distorted and disconnected people sounded on the phone. She hated the tinny way her voice bounced back at her if the connection was bad. She hated the awkward silence after a conversation ended and neither of them knew whether to hang up or keep talking. Most of all, she hated not being able to read people's expressions as they spoke. Voices could be detached, inscrutable, misleading. Voices could lie. Frowns and raised eyebrows and body language could not.

So when she recognized Gansey's voice on the other end of the landline at work, she was understandably suspicious.

"Hello," he said as soon as she picked up. "Is Blue Sargent there?"

Blue's eyebrows rose a fraction. "It's me."

"Oh. Hello, Blue."

"Why are you calling me at work?"

"I don't have your phone number."

Blue paused. Even after all this time, she was still a little wary of Gansey, of this Walton boy who was so extraordinarily more Walton than any other Walton boy she'd seen, who could have had his pick of any friend in the school and still chose to spend his time with a walking death threat and two poor kids from Henrietta. She didn't understand his motives, so she didn't trust him. Adam knew this. Still, she hadn't thought she'd been so blatant about her misgivings. It wouldn't be right if Adam lost the new friends he'd found because Blue had been rude.

So all Blue said to Gansey's unasked question was, "Oh. That's weird. But still. Why are you calling me?"

"I'm leaving campus for lunch. Would you like to join me?"

Blue's first thought was, _No._ Her second thought was, _Don't be rude._ What came out of her mouth was, "I still have work for another hour."

"That's perfectly all right. I can come by and wait for you at the coffee shop if that's easiest."

Try as she might, Blue couldn't actually come up with a good reason to say no. "Sure, Gansey. See you in a bit."

This was going to be a disaster.

* * *

Gansey showed up about forty-five minutes before Blue's shift ended, and true to his word, he bought black coffee—strangely different from his usual caramel macchiato, but Blue didn't question him about it—and read a weirdly thick book in a corner booth until she pulled off her apron and went over to kick him in the shin until he looked up. Something about him seemed more disheveled than usual, but Blue couldn't figure out what it was.

"Done already?" he asked, voice tinged with the slightest old Virginian inflection. Blue wanted to be annoyed with him for using his Richard Campbell Gansey III voice on her, but then he reached up and adjusted the thin wire frames perched on his nose, and Blue had never seen him wear glasses before, and _that_ was it, that was what made him seem disheveled, because the glasses were crooked despite his best efforts to keep them level, and by the time Blue figured it out, she had forgotten that she was annoyed.

"Yup," she said. "So where are we going for lunch?" As soon as the words left her mouth, she could almost feel Nino's signature pizza grease coating her tongue. "Wait. Never mind. I don't know why I asked."

Gansey closed his book. "Don't tell the others, but there's actually been a significant deficit of vegetables in my diet lately. It's a bit longer of a drive, but would you mind terribly if we went to a Greek restaurant I'm fond of instead?"

Blue was so relieved by the promise of vegetables—and even better, _Greek yogurt_ —that she agreed immediately. She didn't fully process the words _it's a bit longer of a drive_ until she was already secured to the Pig's passenger seat with the dubious protection of a 1973 seatbelt, and by then it was easy for her stomach to overrule the _abort abort abort_ message flashing in her brain.

Gansey turned on the engine. Blue felt the resulting vibration down to her bones.

"I would turn on the radio, but it's been malfunctioning recently," he said, all polite apology and pressed khakis. "Hopefully even my voice is preferable to static and occasional guitar screeches."

Blue couldn't think of anything to say to that, so she said nothing at all. Minutes passed. Gansey pulled onto the interstate. Blue wondered if static and occasional guitar screeches were preferable to the pained silence that had descended between them. Only when an ambulance passed with flashing lights and blaring alarm did Blue remember what she had missed four days ago, and then she turned her head and said, "How is Ronan?"

Gansey's fingers tightened on the steering wheel almost imperceptibly. "The doctors all think he'll have scars."

"…Oh."

"Not that Ronan cares. Not that I know if he cares." Gansey pushed his glasses up again. (They were still crooked.) "Apparently, I don't know him at all."

Blue wound her fingers through the torn fringe of her shirt. "I'm still having trouble believing it."

"Believe it," Gansey said grimly. All traces of Richard Campbell Gansey III were long gone. "He's still refusing to talk to me about it. I don't think I've ever seen someone storm out of a room so many times in one day. Maybe Adam's having better luck."

Blue forgot the strange thread of guilt winding its way into her stomach—strange because she couldn't figure out what she was feeling guilty about—and frowned. "Adam?"

"Yes." Gansey looked at her strangely. "Ronan's been over to your dorm almost every day since he got out of the hospital. You didn't know?"

"No. I mean, I've been pretty busy the past few days, so it makes sense that I haven't run into him yet, but I didn't think that Adam—" She stopped abruptly and tugged at a loose strand of hair. _Don't be rude_ , she reminded herself fiercely.

But Gansey only smiled, rueful and self-deprecating. He suddenly looked very much like a boy who wore wire-framed glasses and didn't get much sleep. "You don't have to worry about being offensive. I'm well aware that Ronan can be a bit… much."

Blue laughed before she could stop herself. "That's a _bit_ of an understatement."

"I know, I know!" Gansey laughed too, but only for a moment. It was the glasses, Blue decided. They sobered and aged him in equal degree. "That's why I invited you to lunch, actually."

"Because Ronan is a bit much?"

"No, because of Adam."

She blinked. "Adam?"

"Is he all right?"

She blinked again. " _Adam_?"

He scrubbed a hand under his glasses, rubbing at a corner of his eye. It was the most human gesture Blue had ever seen from him. In fact, this entire conversation was making Gansey entirely too human for her liking. It was unnerving. "Yes, Adam. I didn't try to stop Ronan from spending so much time in Adam's room because he _is_ supposed to be under constant supervision and—and it's been nice to spend hours where that supervision isn't my responsibility. But I realized that my selfishness is entirely unfair to Adam. After all, Ronan tried to kill himself. I would understand if Adam didn't—if being around Ronan so much made him uncomfortable."

Blue fidgeted with the strap of her seatbelt. "Why didn't you invite Adam to lunch, then?"

When Gansey furrowed his eyebrows, his eyes wrinkled at the corners. "It's Adam. I didn't think he'd give me a straight answer if anything was actually bothering him."

This conversation was becoming far too serious for 1 p.m. on a sunny afternoon, so Blue laughed. It _was_ a little funny, realizing that there was someone else in the world who understood Adam Parrish like she did. Or, if he didn't fully understand him, was at least trying to. "That's true," she said, and then laughed again. "But I don't think you need to worry about Adam. If Ronan started to annoy him, he wouldn't have to rely on you to kick him out."

Gansey's smile was a little amused and a little impressed and a little anxious. "Still. You'll tell me if he seems—I mean, with Ronan? If he does anything offensive."

"Ronan does something offensive at least once an hour," Blue pointed out. Then Gansey winced, and guilt softened her expression. "Gansey, you've only known Ronan for a few weeks longer than Adam has. You aren't any more responsible for his behavior than Adam is. If Ronan _does_ cross a line, Adam won't blame you."

"Maybe," Gansey said, surprised into loosening his grip on the steering wheel. "But… it would hurt Adam either way. I don't want that."

He took his eyes off the road to glance at her, and Blue was struck with a sudden feeling that she couldn't immediately place. Something between gratitude and protectiveness— _concerned fondness_ , maybe. It was not a feeling that she had ever expected to associate with Gansey, but he was sitting there with earnest worry written into every twist of his mouth, hair tousled by the wind coming through the Pig's window, anxious eyes framed by glasses, and the concerned fondness lodged close to her heart and refused to move. Finally, Blue had to look away, hoping that the movement would lessen her desire to wrap Gansey into a hug.

(It didn't.)

Just before the silence between them shifted from comfortable to unfortunate, Gansey pulled into a parking space in front of a Greek restaurant.

Well… _restaurant_ was a kind word for it. Blue still didn't understand how Gansey, with all his money and prestige and hundred-dollar boat shoes, found out about places like this. But she could see baklava being served through the restaurant window, and that was enough for Blue.

In true Gansey fashion, he held the door to the restaurant open for her and waved her inside with a grin. Blue stepped up to the hostess before Gansey could pull out his Richard Campbell Gansey III smile and accidentally get them free lunches or something equally absurd. "Hi," she said politely, knowing firsthand just how aggravating working in the food industry could be. "Table for two, please?"

"The wait is about fifteen minutes—is that all right with you?"

Blue spared a glance at Gansey, who was currently examining the posters on the walls like they were fascinating ancient artifacts instead of advertisements for old movies. "Yes, that's fine."

"Could I get a name, so I can call you when your table is ready?"

"Blue Sargent."

"…Blue?"

She held back a sigh. "Yes, Blue."

"Huh." The hostess wrote down her name hesitantly, and then offered up a smile. "Cool nickname."

With careful effort, Blue managed to refrain from rolling her eyes. "Thanks."

When she turned away, she found Gansey looking at her with curiosity. "Isn't Blue your real name?"

Blue grimaced. "It is. It's just easier to let people think what they want."

Gansey actually reached up and rubbed his chin, a motion Blue's high school counselor had been fond of using every time he was attempting to appear particularly intelligent. It had always seemed unbearably fake and pretentious to Blue, but Gansey did it so absently that it looked natural. "You can't really blame them for thinking otherwise. I've always felt a little strange calling you Blue."

She narrowed her eyes. "What."

"It's just so… informal."

"Yes, well, my family's pretty informal," she said irritably. "I _like_ the name Blue."

"Well, I've always liked the name Jane."

Blue frowned at him in confusion for a few moments, and then her mouth dropped open. "No. No, you can't just—"

Gansey started to laugh.

Blue drew herself up to her full height (which, granted, wasn't much) and jutted her chin out in righteous indignation. "You can't just name people whatever you like!"

"You're holding up the line, Jane," Gansey said, still grinning. "Let's sit down until our table is ready."

* * *

"So," Gansey said once they were situated at a small booth and presented with slightly greasy menus. "I've worried about Ronan. I've worried about Adam. It seems only fair that I worry about you too."

Blue raised her eyebrows, forgetting her annoyance over the Jane incident for a moment. "Me? Why would you worry about me?"

"I worry about all my friends," Gansey said, trying for a lighthearted tone and only mostly succeeding. "It's a curse."

Blue wondered which was more surprising—the fact that a seemingly perfect Walton boy with an endlessly bright future could spend so much time being worried, or the fact that he was so certain that they were friends. _Well… you_ are _friends_ , she reasoned with herself. But they'd never spent time alone together, had barely even seen each other without Adam or Ronan present. It felt strange to hear Gansey define their relationship so simply, so assuredly, so matter-of-factly.

"Come on, Jane," Gansey said, tapping his fingers lightly against the corner of his menu. "You can't tell me that there's nothing troubling you."

" _You're_ troubling me," Blue said, "by prying into my business."

Gansey just raised his eyebrows at her.

Blue raised her eyebrows right back.

Finally, Gansey gave up. "All right. I apologize for being presumptuous. How was your vacation, then?"

"What vacation?"

"Adam told me you went out of town last weekend and just returned on Wednesday."

"Oh." Blue rolled her eyes. "That wasn't much of a vacation. My cousin Orla was getting married."

"You don't sound particularly happy about that," Gansey said neutrally.

Blue made a face. "I'm not… I'm not _unhappy_ about it. But Orla's only known the guy for a year, and they were only engaged for a few months before the wedding."

"You think she rushed into the marriage?"

"Oh, she _definitely_ rushed into the marriage."

"That's… very sensible of you."

"Of course it's sensible," Blue said irritably. "I don't know how she even had time to plan the wedding in three months, let alone make sure that she actually _wanted_ to marry the guy."

A tiny smile flashed across Gansey's face. "You don't believe in true love?"

Blue flinched before she could help herself. She did, however, make sure to keep her expression firmly planted in irritation and nothing else. "I believe in true love," she said. "I just don't believe that Orla would know what true love was if it smacked her in the face. You don't know how many boyfriends she's had since she turned thirteen."

"That's rather judgmental of you, don't you think?"

Blue thought it was hilarious that _Gansey_ was lecturing her about being judgmental. "I'm not judging her for having a lot of boyfriends," she said. "I'm judging her for meeting a guy and marrying him in less time than her longest relationship lasted."

The waiter came by and took their drink order. Gansey ordered a Coke. The thought of ingesting any more caffeine still disgusted Blue after her long shift at the coffee shop (no matter what Adam said, she was convinced that it was possible to absorb caffeine directly into her bloodstream through all the coffee fumes), so she asked for a water.

"Well," Gansey said after the waiter left, "hopefully your cousin's marriage will last longer than her previous relationship record."

"Maybe," Blue said, not bothering to hide the doubt in her voice. "You don't know Orla like I do. I honestly thought she was going to prefer bar-hopping and one-night stands to serious relationships for at least another six years. I'm just worried that she got married because people keep leaving our house, and she wanted to get out before she was the last one."

Gansey tilted his head. "Your cousin lives at home with you?"

"Not just my cousin." Blue hesitated in a moment of apprehension. Gansey's family undoubtedly lived in a mansion three times the size of 300 Fox Way, with maids and personal chefs and gardeners to fill up the square feet that would otherwise be occupied by two perfect parents and 2.5 perfect children. What would he think of a rickety house filled to the brim with eccentric women?

"That must be nice," Gansey said, "having so many people around," and the wistfulness in his tone banished Blue's apprehension and replaced it with something like guilt.

"We do have a lot of people around," Blue admitted. "All women. Well, except for my mom's weird boyfriend. He comes and goes, though."

Gansey blinked. "Your entire family is made up of women? That's—um. Unusual."

"Oh, they're not all family," Blue said. "There's my mom and my aunt and three of my cousins—two now that Orla's moved out—but the rest of them are just… friends."

"Huh. Your house must be pretty full, then."

Blue shrugged. "Used to be fuller."

"How so?"

Blue fiddled with the lid of the salt shaker. "Well, I moved out for college, right? And one of my mom's friends packed up and left to go on a cross-country road trip of rediscovery."

"Rediscovery of what?"

"The universe? Life? Herself? Who knows." Blue sighed. "I wanted to go with her, but there was no guarantee I'd be back in time for college. Hyacinth is terrible at communication and even more terrible at meeting deadlines. Anyway, she left, and I left, and Neeve became semi-famous and moved to California to write a book and enjoy her newfound financial stability, and… four months ago, my mom's friend Persephone died unexpectedly."

" _Oh_." The word was a barely-there exhale between Gansey's lips. "Blue, I'm so sorry."

Blue tried to shrug and instead accidentally tipped the salt shaker over, sending a cluster of tiny white grains skidding across the table. By the time she managed to gather most of them into a lopsided pyramid near the napkin holder and throw a pinch of the remaining salt over her left shoulder—it went against Blue's sensible nature to be superstitious, in theory, but even she wasn't stupid enough to see spilling salt immediately after mentioning a dead friend as anything but bad luck; Persephone herself had taught her that—their drinks had arrived. This was fortunate, as Blue's mouth suddenly felt extremely dry. Grabbing her water and slurping down a few desperate mouthfuls bought her another thirty seconds, and as she carefully set her glass to the side, Blue thought she had finally fought off the urge to cry.

It was still extremely difficult to look Gansey in the eye. After a few aborted attempts, Blue gave up and fixed her gaze on the collar of his polo shirt instead.

"Long story short," she said slowly, "with all those people leaving, Orla probably figured it was time to make her own escape. That's why I think her marriage was a bad idea."

She risked flicking her eyes up to Gansey's face and was surprised to see him smiling. "What?"

"Nothing," Gansey said, but the corner of his mouth was still quirked upward, betraying him. "You just sound quite worried about Orla making good choices about her life. It seems you're just as cursed as I am."

Blue flinched again. "I—"

Before she could finish—or even figure out what she was going to say—Gansey's phone vibrated so violently that it started inching along the table. Blue watched as he leaned over to check the caller I.D. and froze with his fingertips half a breath from the screen. He didn't hesitate for long. The phone was only halfway through another vibration by the time he lifted it off the table. But the pause was sudden enough, awkward enough, complete enough, to spark Blue's curiosity and make her forget about the ache that accompanied mentions of curses and marriages and dead Persephones.

"I'm sorry, Jane, I have to take this," Gansey said, forcibly casual. "Excuse me."

He touched a finger to his screen, lifted the phone to his ear, and slid out of the booth before Blue had a chance to say "Okay." She stared after him until the arrival of their waiter made her jump.

"Are you ready to order?"

Blue blinked, remembering suddenly that they were supposed to be getting lunch and she hadn't even glanced at her menu. "No," she said, flashing the waiter an apologetic smile. "I think we're going to need a few more minutes."

Perusing the menu occupied her attention until Gansey returned about five minutes later, looking pensive and thoughtful and decidedly unlike the boy who had told her that he liked the name Jane.

Blue drummed her fingers on the table. "So," she said, "if you're going to worry about all of our friends, does that mean that I'm the one who has to worry about you?"

Gansey startled and pulled his eyes away from the menu. "No," he said. "That phone call was just a little disappointing. Nothing to be worried about yet."

He smiled at Blue, but the smile had too much Richard Campbell Gansey III in it to put her at ease. "So which salad dressing do you think would be better on the Greek with a Twist—Thousand Island or Balsamic?"

The question was so mundane that Blue was tempted to ignore it and demand an explanation for the mysterious phone call, especially when he was still wearing that Richard Campbell Gansey III smile. But in the end, Blue was repulsed enough by the mere _mention_ of Thousand Island salad dressing to let it draw her attention away from the mystery and toward the menu. Besides, explaining to Gansey just how _much_ she despised Thousand Island dressing wiped off the Richard Campbell Gansey III smile and replaced it with a happier, younger, more genuine Gansey one, and that made the subject change worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The number of comments I received for the last chapter is incredible! Thank you all so much, I'm honored and flattered :') Of course, half of those comments come from my replies, which I feel slightly duplicitous about because it literally doubles my comments count in ao3 filters??? But I also can't imagine not responding to you wonderful people, so... oh well. Please keep the comments coming if you enjoyed the chapter, that was really lovely.
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](http://actuallymollyweasley.tumblr.com) if you want to talk trc, writing, or basically anything else!
> 
> EDIT: A wonderful person and amazing artist, aka [@thehufflepuffshuffle](http://thehufflepuffshuffle.tumblr.com), drew something for this chapter of my fic, and it's _gorgeous_ and I'm _screaming_. You can find it [here](http://thehufflepuffshuffle.tumblr.com/post/150269420569/it-was-not-a-feeling-that-blue-had-ever)!


	6. Explosions in Total Darkness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey friends, there are mentions of blood in this chapter so proceed with caution if that's triggering at all!
> 
> Also, [@pygmytyrants](http://pygmytyrants.tumblr.com) is a great beta and Henry and Noah have finally snuck their way into this fic :D

A month passed. Just as Adam had expected, Ronan was cleared by their college counselor, which meant that he no longer had to glare his way through therapy or be under constant supervision. Of course, that didn't mean that Gansey stopped worrying, or that Ronan was left alone for long periods of time. As far as Adam could tell, Ronan didn't even attempt to be alone, usually. Instead, he became an annoying fixture in Adam's life. 

* * *

Not that he was the only development. 

A week after Gansey found Ronan bleeding out in their suite, Adam was sitting on a park bench, listening to Gansey dreamily recount another Glendower legend while he waited for his coffee to cool, when another freshman's skateboard caught on a loose rock and went airborne, taking the freshman with him. The resulting crash into a tree was almost as loud and painful-sounding as Ronan's awful electronic music. 

As Gansey was Gansey, he stopped mid-speech to check on the skateboarder. Adam was inclined to care a little less at first, seeing as any injury would be the boy's own fault for wearing an unnecessarily fitted t-shirt and using an unnecessarily expensive skateboard instead of investing in more important things like helmets or knee pads. But then the guy grinned and waved off Gansey's offer of help, noting that he hadn't enjoyed that much of an adrenaline rush in ages, and the innocent joy in his face, combined with the glitter on his shoes, made it impossible for Adam to hate him. 

"If you're so into adrenaline rushes, you should meet Ronan," Adam said, forgetting for a moment that he wouldn't wish a meeting with Ronan on people who annoyed him, let alone people he actually  _liked_.

"Oh, I've heard of Ronan," the skateboarder said, and Gansey's eyebrows creased with concern for just another moment before he added, "I'd love to meet him."

Gansey raised his eyebrows at Adam in a silent  _should I—?_

Adam raised his eyebrows right back in a silent  _he asked for it._  

That night, Noah Czerny showed up to Nino's in a glittery t-shirt and seemed unaffected by Ronan's moodiness, to the point that after a particularly vibrant skateboarding story, when Ronan snorted and said that there were way more interesting ways to pass time with a skateboard, Noah just grinned and asked what Ronan had in mind. 

Adam followed them to make sure that Noah wasn't in danger of receiving any bodily harm. 

(He definitely wasn't following them to see what Ronan Lynch actually deemed  _interesting_.)

By the time they went off to bed, Adam couldn't decide what astounded him more—the fact that Noah maintained his interest and enthusiasm for the evil metal death ramp Ronan was building in the parking lot in front of Walton, or the fact that he actually took his skateboard and  _used_  the evil metal death ramp after Ronan deemed it stable. 

(Then again, Adam used it too. So maybe they were all a little crazy.)

The next day, Adam went back to Walton with Blue, only to discover that Noah and Ronan were already back at work on the evil metal death ramp from the night before. Gansey was hovering next to Ronan, fretting about the safety of such a "risky endeavor," as he so Gansily put it. A Korean guy with impossibly tall hair was hovering in a similar way next to Noah, only he was giving cheeky suggestions about how Noah could make the death trap even more  _exciting_. 

"Adam!" Noah said cheerily as they approached. "Who is the painfully pretty girl standing next to you?"

Adam fully expected Blue to mouth off at Noah for a comment like that, but apparently she found Noah as endearing as Gansey did. "Blue Sargent," she said, grinning and bopping Noah on the nose. "Who is the painfully pretty  _boy_  standing next to  _you_?"

"Blue Sargent, meet Henry Cheng, brilliant engineer and owner of his own personal line of haircare products that have been endorsed by celebrities such as the illustrious Ellen Degeneres herself. He got into MIT but came here to hang out with me instead."

"Ah, Noah, it's not like I'm slumming it here," Henry said. "And stop lying to people about my line of haircare products. You know Ellen hasn't agreed to the endorsement yet."

"But she  _will_ ," Noah said with another bright smile. He leaned over to Blue and, in an exaggerated whisper, added, "Isn't he brilliant? We're not putting a label on it yet, but I want him to be my boyfriend."

Henry rolled his eyes. "Stop telling people we haven't put a label on it yet."

"But if I have to introduce you as my boyfriend, then I'll have less breath to inform people of your brilliance."

"So save breath in other areas," Henry said magnanimously, "and introduce us collectively as  _Czeng_."

"You're both disgusting," Ronan said disgustedly. For a split-second, Adam recalled Ronan's Catholic upbringing and felt his stomach bottom out, but then Ronan added, "Real-life couples aren't supposed to be this sickening. Save it for  _The Notebook._ "

The look on Blue's face was nothing short of devious. " _Ronan Lynch_ ," she gasped, " _have you seen The Notebook_?" 

Ronan chewed at his new wristbands, which didn't look particularly new anymore, but before Blue could actually squeal at obtaining such good extortion material, he said, "It's Gansey's favorite movie. Get him drunk enough and he won't shut up about it." 

Which Adam noticed didn't actually answer Blue's question at all.

"I'll have you know," Gansey said with prim offense, "that  _The Notebook_  is a cinematic masterpiece."

Henry looked at all of them and cackled. Noah gave a little sigh and said, "I love that movie too," which only served to further endear him to Gansey and make Henry laugh harder. 

Ronan glared at all of them—his eyes lingering inexplicably on Adam, even though Adam hadn't yet said a word—and went back to working on the metal death trap. But Adam saw Gansey turn around in righteous indignation and frown at Ronan for giving him away, and it was the first time he'd looked at Ronan without not-so-thinly-veiled concern in a week. 

A few weeks ago, Czeng might not have fit into their group at all. 

By this point, however, they were all sorely in need of a laugh. 

* * *

There were other developments as well. 

Blue went out with Gansey in the Pig one afternoon and came back laughing. After that, Adam noticed that she stopped tensing every time Gansey came into a room and started grinning at him instead. Gansey responded to the grins by teasing her and calling her Jane. Adam didn't understand it, but he was glad that Blue wasn't wary of spending time with his other friends anymore.

Gansey got a call from an old friend and told them all excitedly about a new Glendower lead before disappearing in the Pig for two days and coming back with a new book and heightened enthusiasm—if it was even possible for his old enthusiasm to reach new levels.

Adam picked up extra hours at the garage one weekend and found himself with money he didn't desperately need for the first time in recent memory. He celebrated by buying himself a good pair of dark grey slacks—his last pair were at least an inch too short after an unfortunate incident involving his dorm's laundry machine—and carefully put the rest into his savings account, the one the bank had forced him to open when he got a checking account so he could pay his tuition. He'd never had savings before, and even a measly sixty dollars felt like an accomplishment. 

But there was no doubt in Adam's mind that Ronan Lynch was the most extensive and annoying development of all.

As the month progressed, Ronan spent a weirdly large amount of time in Adam's dorm. Sometimes he sketched, sometimes he told Adam about things he wanted to sketch, and once he even came over to get Adam's help on a paper for their seminar. But mostly he sat on Adam's bed and watched Adam work and didn't say much of anything. Occasionally he fell asleep. Nearly every time, he left something useful in Adam's room "accidentally" and then pretended not to want it anymore. 

It kept him out of the hospital, so Adam let him keep coming back. 

"What's your excuse this time?" Adam asked when Ronan showed up just after Blue left to go to class. 

In response, he pulled a canvas out from under his arm and stuck it in Adam's face. "Tell me, Parrish. If you were a teacher, would you fail me this time?"

Adam sighed and leaned away so he could see it better. The canvas was mostly black, with jagged lines of red and green shooting out of one corner. At first glance, it didn't look like much, but as Adam squinted at it longer, he could almost see furrowed eyebrows and clenched teeth and cold shoulders hiding within the lines. 

"Hatred?" he guessed. 

"Jealousy."

"Ah. Same thing, really."

"So, it's terrible." Ronan threw the painting onto Adam's bed, and Adam prayed desperately to no one that the paint was dry. "I fucking figured."

They both knew his teacher would give him an A. Dr. Azalea thought Ronan had a  _wonderful_  grasp of the  _human psyche_. Adam thought that Ronan didn't have a grasp on his own psyche, let alone anyone else's. But he was still the best artist Adam had ever seen. 

Ronan ignored the cushioning of Adam's bed and slumped onto the ground beside it instead, leaning against it carelessly and knotting his fingers behind his head even though Blue's chair had been clear for days. "You probably know more about jealousy than I do."

Adam turned back to his desk, frowning at an unfinished math problem. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Really?" Ronan challenged. "So you haven't noticed that your girlfriend's been flirting with Gansey for weeks?"

Adam scribbled his way through the problem, checked his answer against the one in the back of the book, and grimaced. "I don't have a girlfriend."

"You're not dating the maggot you share a room with?"

"Blue?" Adam was startled into a laugh. "No, Blue and I—no. We're friends. Although I didn't think Gansey was her type."

Ronan picked up his jealousy painting and pointed a corner of it at Adam. "And Blue isn't yours?"

Adam corrected his mistake—a stupid multiplication error; he blamed Ronan—and checked the answer again. It was right this time. "Not anymore." He worked three more problems before adding, "We dated in high school, but I screwed it up. It's for the best, anyway. I'm pretty sure we only dated in the first place because everyone expected us to."

"I don't care, Parrish."

Adam shrugged and finished the rest of the problem set. "You're the one who asked."

When he looked over again, Ronan was asleep. 

Adam shook his head and pulled out the reading for their Irish folklore seminar. It was kind of absurd, the amount of time Ronan spent asleep in his room, but Adam wasn't cruel enough to wake him up. Both he and Gansey had unpredictable bouts of insomnia, and Adam knew both of them well enough to guess that Ronan barging into his room at 9 a.m. with a finished project meant that he'd been working on it all night. So Adam let him sleep as he highlighted his way through Irish myths and chemistry notes. He didn't notice how much time had passed until Blue barged into their room in her usual noisy way and pulled up short at the sight of Ronan. She scrunched her nose at Adam, and Adam guessed he could understand why Ronan had thought they were still dating. Blue did look rather devastating when she nose-scrunched.

"What's he doing here?"

"Sleeping."

"Does he do that often?"

Adam shrugged. "It's Ronan."

"Huh." Blue eyed him suspiciously. "Well, I just came by to grab a cardigan. I'm meeting Gansey for lunch, and it's way too cold for early October." A beat of silence. "Do you want to come?"

Adam highlighted a formula in his chem notes and considered Blue's question. "Are you flirting with Gansey?"

Blue pulled her cardigan off the hanger with unnecessary force, and the hanger clattered to the floor, banging against her closet door as it did. Surprisingly, Ronan didn't even stir. "Why would you ask that?"

Adam twisted around, eyeing Blue over the back of his chair. "Just wondering if me going to lunch with you would get in the way of that."

Blue drew herself up indignantly. "Adam Parrish, I would not have invited you if I didn't want you to come. Who do you think I am?"

"My best friend," Adam said easily. "And I didn't say I didn't think you wanted me there. I just said I thought I might get in the way."

Halfway through tugging her sweater on, Blue deflated. "I don't know."

"Don't know if you're flirting, or don't know if I'd get in the way?"

"Both. Neither?" Blue sighed and stuck her other arm into her cardigan. "I don't know what I'm doing. You know there's a reason I don't date."

"I know. I also know that two months ago, you would have laughed if I asked you if you were flirting with Gansey."

The smallest smirk flitted across Blue's face. "Me and Gansey, Henry and Noah. You know who that leaves, right? Are  _you_  flirting with  _Ronan_?"

Adam turned back around and examined his chem notes. "Go to lunch, Blue."

Blue laughed. "Sure you don't want to come?"

"Do you really want to leave Ronan unsupervised in our room?"

Blue paused with her hand on the doorknob. "Wow. Can't believe I didn't think about that." She pulled the door open. "Well, Gansey's probably annoyingly punctual, so I should get going. Text me if you want anything!"

They both knew he wouldn't, but Blue still asked. Adam figured it was some sort of best friend requirement.

The door slammed behind Blue, and Adam couldn't help but raise his eyebrows when Ronan still didn't stir. He hesitated for a minute, then said, "Ronan, I need food too."

No response.

"I can't believe you were right about Blue flirting."

Nothing.

Adam sighed, crumpled up a piece of notebook paper covered in scratched-out arithmetic, and chucked it at Ronan's head.

The result was like hitting the ground after a twenty-foot drop, losing his breath after a punch to the solar plexus, triggering an explosion in total darkness. Adam's vision shorted out, blinded by something he couldn't comprehend, and when he could see again, everything was blood, blood, blood.

Adam's brain short-circuited, tried to focus, and short-circuited again.

The second time, he decided to start small and catalogued observations one by one, carefully avoiding putting the pieces together and drawing any conclusions.

One: Ronan wasn't moving.

Two: his arms and hands were covered in blood.

Three: that blood was also splattered across Ronan's jeans and soaking into Adam's carpet. Adam felt a fleeting moment of relief that Ronan hadn't fallen asleep on his bed. Then he considered the fact that Ronan had been _asleep_ when this happened, and his brain short-circuited again, and he fell out of his desk chair. The rush of air and subsequent loss of breath was too much for his flailing intellect to process. By the time Adam stopped panicking, he was a crumpled heap on the floor, and Ronan was staring at him.

Adam stared back—waiting for an explanation, waiting for emotion, waiting for a belated scream of pain because all that blood had to come from _somewhere_ —but Ronan didn't even twitch. The longer Ronan went without speaking, the more Adam's hands shook, until he finally found enough air to breathe, "Ronan. What the fuck."

Ronan's bloody hands clenched into fists against his jeans. "I will fucking kill you if you mention this to anyone."

Adam teetered on the ledge between bafflement and hysteria and took a plunge into the latter. "If I _mention_ this to anyone? Ronan, what the _fuck_ , you're covered in blood, what am I not supposed to be mentioning to anyone what the _FUCK_ —"

"It's not just blood."

That pulled Adam up short. "What?"

Ronan gestured at himself. "There's not actually that much blood. It's diluted. Don't you smell it?"

It took a while, but eventually Adam's brain focused enough to take stock of his other senses. Then the smell was unmistakable, especially to a mechanic. "Gasoline?"

He nodded.

"Ronan." Adam tried to keep his hands from shaking again, but it wasn't easy. "Why is there blood and gasoline in my dorm room?"

Ronan used one bloody finger to draw senseless swirls across his forearm. "I dreamed it up."

"Yeah, right."

Ronan's gaze didn't waver.

"Yeah, _right_ ," Adam repeated more emphatically. "Ronan, that's—that's impossible. You know that, right?"

"I know that," Ronan said. "I also know that I dreamed blood and gasoline onto your carpet."

"But—"

"I also dreamed that," Ronan added, gesturing at one of the random objects he'd left in Adam's room the other day, "and that, and that, and that, and the pen you're holding in your hand right now. Why do you think it hasn't run out of ink yet?"

Adam took a break from Ronan's penetrating stare to examine the pen in his hand—the one he'd thought was too expensive-looking to belong to Ronan all those weeks ago—and then the bloodstain on his dorm carpet. Ronan followed his gaze and actually looked vaguely apologetic for the first time Adam could remember.

"Sorry about that. I can usually control this better."

Adam furrowed his eyebrows, tapping an erratic rhythm on his knee with his apparently-magical pen. He was staring at Ronan for much too long, but he couldn't really help it. He usually prided himself on being logical and analytical—after all, if he hadn't been able to trust his intelligence, he never would have gotten out of Henrietta—and Ronan's story sounded foolish and illogical and impossible and a hundred other adjectives that meant Adam absolutely should not have believed a word he was saying. 

Except. 

Adam also trusted his own senses, more so now than ever because of his useless left ear. And he had definitely seen Ronan asleep and relatively clean one moment, and paralyzed and covered in blood and gasoline the next. That wasn't the kind of prank that people could just— _do_. In fact, the idea that Ronan had faked this was just as impossible as his assertion that he'd actually dreamt it up. 

Besides, Ronan was still looking back at him steadily, even after all this time, wary and defiant and not even chewing on the wristbands Adam had bought him. 

Adam's hands stopped shaking, and he said, "Well. For a guy with a small fortune, you're kind of a cheapskate."

Ronan stared at him for another thirty seconds before grinning and saying, "Ungrateful asshole."

Adam shrugged. "Yeah, well, you'd better help this ungrateful asshole clean up all this shit, or else you're going to be explaining to Blue why our room smells like gasoline and blood."

Finally, Ronan looked away. "All right, shithead. Lucky I dreamed up that all-purpose cleaner for you last week."

Adam couldn't help glancing down at his shirt, where that particular all-purpose cleaner had gotten out an axle grease stain he'd discovered after a particularly long work shift just the other day. Suddenly, Ronan being able to dream up his own reality didn't seem impossible at all. 

"Yeah," he echoed. "Lucky."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://actuallymollyweasley.tumblr.com)
> 
> EDIT: The amazing [@thegreywarenloveshim](http://thegreywarenloveshim.tumblr.com) made some BEAUTIFUL art for this chapter, so make sure to check out her beautiful sketches of a [skateboarding Noah](http://actuallymollyweasley.tumblr.com/post/150600536465/thegreywarenloveshim-can-we-talk-about) and a [napping Ronan](http://actuallymollyweasley.tumblr.com/post/150710522350/thegreywarenloveshim-anyways-read).


	7. A Capacity for Warmth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [@pygmytyrants](http://pygmytyrants.tumblr.com) is killing it as my beta, as usual

Adam couldn't imagine what it was like to be an artist. He couldn't see himself becoming one, even if he had ever had the time or energy or patience to attempt to join the profession. Because Adam saved money like his life depended on it—because it did—and artists were... exorbitantly wasteful.

Or maybe that was just Ronan.

He watched with furrowed eyebrows as Ronan tore out yet another page of his sketchbook and threw it onto the pile of other crumpled pages resting at his feet. "You know," he said, "you've probably wasted an entire tree on this art assignment by now."

Ronan's only response was to pick up his fallen sketch and throw it at Adam's face instead.

Luckily, Noah intercepted it before it could reach its target and unfurled the page with innocent glee. It was a half-finished roller coaster with a hole in the tracks at the bottom of a particularly long drop. "I don't know why you keep throwing these away," he said, balancing it on the tip of his nose. "I think this looks great. Which emotion are you doing this time?"

"Excitement," Ronan said, sounding distinctly unexcited about it.

"Excitement?!" Noah repeated, the enthusiasm in his voice more than compensating for Ronan's lack thereof. "How fun! Put the metal death ramp in it. No, put the Pig in it. No, put the Pig flying _over_ the metal death ramp in it. That's exciting!"

"Shut the fuck up, Noah," Ronan said, but for once he didn't sound particularly angry. He was always much more tolerant of Noah than of Adam, which would have annoyed Adam if he wasn't aware that he was also much more tolerant of Noah than he was of Ronan. Something about the glittery shoes discouraged rudeness.

Blue scooted closer to Noah on the couch so she could see the discarded drawing as well. "Maybe you should take all of these and make a collage," she said thoughtfully. "Tear off the edges and dye each page a different color, and then glue them randomly onto a canvas. As long as the dyes you use are neon enough, that should come off as pretty excited."

"You shut the fuck up too, maggot," Ronan grumbled. Adam could see just enough of the page to know that he was erasing a smudged pencil line. "You can't just give me ideas and expect me to use them in my assignment."

"Why not?"

"They're not mine. It'd be cheating."

And there it was. Ronan's weird honesty thing. Adam still had trouble wrapping his mind around the fact that Ronan had no problem drinking and getting into fights and driving twenty-five miles over the speed limit, but he stubbornly refused to lie. It almost made him laugh. Ronan Lynch could dream up pens and blood and magical cleaners, but the thing Adam couldn't understand about him was his honesty. 

Maybe it was just that for Adam, lies had always come as easily as breathing. 

The thought wiped Adam's smile off his face. 

"It wouldn't be cheating if that's the way you chose to approach the assignment," Henry pointed out from his precarious position on the third cushion of the couch, with his legs dangling over the sagging armrest and his head resting in Noah's lap. "Say you took a poll of what made different people excited and then compiled it into one art piece. Then you can use our input without feeling guilty about it."

"That's what Tad fucking Carruthers does every fucking time," Ronan said. "It's boring as fuck."

Blue tilted her head. "Are you sure? Like… _fucking_ sure?"

Ronan ripped out his current sketch and chucked it at Blue's head. Just for variety, Adam figured. To switch things up a little. "Why are you guys even here?" he grumbled, picking up his pencil again. "You're all fucking useless. Go to Nino's or something."

"We were planning on it," Blue said.

"We were just—" Henry started.

"—waiting on Gansey," Noah finished.

Adam blinked. Noah's ability to finish Henry's sentences with such unerring precision never failed to amaze him.

Just as he opened his mouth to say something about it, Gansey stuck his head through the front door. Apparently, Noah's impeccable timing extended beyond simply finishing Henry's sentences. "Sorry I'm late," he said, running a hand through sopping wet hair. "It's raining. Traffic was a nightmare."

Noah frowned. "Is it still raining?"

"Afraid so."

"We'll have to wait on Nino's, then."

Blue wrinkled her nose. "Why?"

"Henry's hair," Noah explained. "The rain would ruin it."

Henry tilted his head so he could land a kiss on Noah's wrist, grinning. "You know me so well."

"I do," Noah agreed. "I also just read your mind."

"A skateboarder _and_ a mind-reader? What a catch."

"I think you're the multi-talented catch in this relationship, Henry."

"Mmm, that's true." Henry patted Noah's shin. "Sorry, babe."

"It's okay. I'm accustomed to inferiority."

"Now, wait, I didn't mean _that_. We are Czeng, after all. We can both be multi-talented catches."

"Really?"

"Sure."

"Oh, good. Equality _is_ important in a relationsh—"

"That's enough," Ronan growled, pointing his pencil at them. "If you shitheads are going to hang around here any longer, then you'd better fucking do it in Gansey's room."

Noah smiled mischievously. "Yeah, Gansey, let's all do it in your room!"

"Czerny, I'm going to fucking kill you."

"Too late," he said cheerfully, "I've already been dead for seven years."

" _Czerny_ —"

"All right," Gansey interrupted hastily, "no murder is necessary. We'll wait out the storm in my room. The rain seemed like it was about to let up anyway."

Sighing, Blue slid off the couch and Noah wriggled out from under Henry's high-maintenance hair. Adam started to push himself off the ground to follow them, but then Ronan said, "Not you, Parrish."

Adam furrowed his eyebrows. "What?"

"You're modeling."

The look on Blue's face was more devious than three of Noah's smiles put together. "I always knew those cheekbones would be good for something."

"But Adam isn't doing anything exciting," Noah pointed out, frowning as if offended that he wasn't the one being asked to model.

Adam was inclined to agree with him.

"It's called juxtaposition, Czerny," Ronan said. "Now get the fuck out."

Gansey shot Adam a quick glance that was all raised eyebrows and wide eyes. The message was clear: _Are you okay with this?_ Adam just shrugged. It wasn't like he hadn't spent plenty of time alone with Ronan over the last several weeks. If anything, this was safer than those encounters, because he could get up and leave if Ronan got too annoying. After another concerned frown that Adam didn't bother responding to, Gansey finally turned and followed the others to his room.

Adam waited a minute, and then shifted around to stretch his legs.

"Don't fucking move. Don't you know anything about modeling?"

He froze, surprised. "You're not actually drawing me, are you?"

Ronan paused mid-pencil stroke to look up and glare at Adam. "I don't lie."

He sighed. "Yes, I'm aware. I just figured…"

"Spit it out, Parrish."

"I figured you wanted to talk about what happened the other day."

Ronan didn't bother feigning ignorance. "I fell asleep in your room and accidentally dreamed up some shit. You found out about it. There's nothing to talk about." He paused. "Unless you told someone."

"Of course not," Adam said, as offended as Ronan was when accused of lying, or as Noah was when not chosen for modeling. "You told me not to. Besides, it's not the sort of thing you just… tell people."

Ronan snorted, which Adam took as acknowledgement. "Put your legs back the way they were."

Adam made a face, but did as he was told. "So do you ever dream up your art?"

"What? The fuck do you think I am?"

"That's not an answer," Adam observed.

" _No_." Ronan was practically growling. Adam half-expected him to sprout fangs and wolf ears. It wouldn't be any stranger than being able to dream his own reality. "Why would you even ask that?"

"It's a valid question," Adam said. "It's not like I ever see you drawing anything except sketches that you trash before anyone can look at them."

Ronan pressed down so hard he actually broke his pencil lead, and then he turned and glared at Adam like it was _his_ fault. Adam stared back, unwilling to back down and unsure what he would even be backing down from. Eventually, Ronan huffed in annoyance and picked out another sketch from the mountain at his feet. He tossed it at Adam's feet instead of his head, which may have been the nicest thing Adam had ever seen him do. "Fine, Parrish. Look at the fucking sketch, then."

For one wild moment, Adam didn't want to. He'd seen Ronan's art before, of course, but those were all pieces he'd made for school. Figure drawings that he'd sketched in three minutes or less, realistic depictions of flowers and trees and candlesticks and other assigned subject matter, the jealousy painting he'd shoved in Adam's face the day he'd dreamed up blood and gasoline. They were incredible works of art, but they were still just graded assignments. They weren't _Ronan's_. The closest Adam had ever gotten to seeing Ronan in his own art was the day he'd cut class to get a tattoo that was supposed to symbolize anger but ended up symbolizing himself—but that had been an accident, and he'd only managed to catch a glimpse, anyway.

This was different. Ronan had purposely chosen this sketch over the others. It meant more than the roller coaster he'd chucked at Adam's face or the hazy outline of whatever he'd thrown at Blue. This was Ronan drawing a piece of his soul and giving Adam permission to see. It felt like too much trust, too much responsibility, too much— _something_. Adam wasn't sure he wanted it.

Then Ronan said, "I don't have all day, Parrish," and Adam realized that he didn't actually have a choice.

Swallowing down the last of his hesitation, he unfurled the piece of paper.

His first thought was, _Ronan Lynch is a goddamn genius._

The picture he'd given to Adam was a drawing of all of them on the couch the way they'd been situated just before Gansey had arrived, with Henry's head resting on Noah's lap and Blue lounging over the other armrest and Adam leaning against the couch at her feet because there wasn't a fourth cushion and he had disliked the idea of being smashed between Noah and Blue, even if both of them had insisted that they didn't mind. Ronan must have drawn the entire scene in fifteen minutes or less, because that was the longest he'd spent on any one sketch, but their positions all looked so natural it was uncanny. It was like he really had taken a picture of them with his mind and dreamed the result into reality.

That wasn't why he was a genius, though.

Because the drawing was more than just accurately placed legs and soft-looking couch cushions. It was Henry's hopelessly fond smile as he gazed up at his boyfriend. It was Noah's hands thrown into the air mid-gesture, enthusiasm present in the quickness of every deft pencil stroke, and his shining grin as he told a story about his sister. It was Blue's hair coming free of its haphazard clips as she threw her head back and laughed, chin sharp and eyes soft. Ronan had discarded the drawing before he could do more than establish Adam's basic position and outline one of his hands, but Adam couldn't bring himself to care. He'd obviously chosen to sketch the group because Noah's face _screamed_ excitement, but the genius was his decision to include everyone else in the scene as well. Noah's hands may have been animated, but they were nothing without Henry's admiration and Blue's amusement. Ronan had recognized that the excitement of storytelling was lost if there was no audience for the story being told, and he'd somehow managed to capture it without even trying. The entire scene was infused with careless vibrancy and lighthearted warmth.

Adam had assumed that Ronan wasn't capable of warmth until this very moment.

Slowly, he realized that his mouth was hanging open and closed it. A second later, he opened it again so he could say, "Why'd you stop?"

Ronan looked at Adam for a very long moment before shaking his head and refocusing on his drawing. "You moved," he said, "and ruined it. Kind of like what you're doing right now."

Adam felt a stinging, overwhelming wave of remorse for stopping the masterpiece on the page in front of him and gingerly set the drawing to the side. "Sorry," he said, and meant it. "I'll stop moving now."

Ronan scoffed like he didn't believe him, but Adam stayed true to his word and didn't budge until Gansey wandered into the living room and told them that the rain had stopped. With a long-suffering sigh, Ronan closed his sketchbook and re-crumpled the picture he'd given Adam before dropping it on top of the mountain of his discarded genius and following Gansey through the door.

Adam made a big show of stretching his legs and cracking his back until Blue and Henry and Noah had all left, and then he darted over, snatched up the drawing, and stuck it into his messenger bag on his way out.

He couldn't bring himself to feel guilty about stealing the sketch. Ronan deserved it for being so exorbitantly wasteful.

* * *

"Remind me," Noah said. "Why exactly are we walking to Nino's, again?"

"The Pig's engine is waterlogged," Gansey said patiently, "and Ronan's car can't fit all six of us."

"The Pig can't fit all six of us either," Noah pointed out. "We make it work."

"You mean, you make me sit on your lap," Blue said, sticking her tongue out at him. "I'm fine with walking."

"I do have a car too, you know," Henry said. "We could have split up between mine and Ronan's." He winked. "It's a hybrid. You'd like it, Blue."

Blue stopped dead and planted her hands on her hips. "You have a car too?" she said indignantly. "Why didn't you mention that _every other time we've gone to Nino's_?"

Henry's grin was almost as bright as one of Gansey's and just as mischievous as one of Noah's. "I enjoy watching you sit on Noah's lap. I've gotten some excellent pictures."

"Unbelievable," she grumbled. "I'm never riding in the Pig again."

"If it bothered you that much," Adam felt the need to point out, "you could have driven there in your own car. It's a minivan. It seats seven."

"Blue Sargent," Henry said with unconcealed mirth, "you drive a _minivan_?"

Blue scowled at Henry, and then she scowled at Adam. "It's my mom's old car. And it's parked on the other side of campus, which is why it's faster to walk to Nino's than to go all the way back there to get it." She crossed her arms and scowled at Adam again. "I can't believe you took their side."

"I'm taking no one's side," Adam protested.

"Cheer up, Jane," Gansey said with a smile. His hair was still damp, and it dripped water into his eyes as he said, "The pictures Henry took really are quite nice."

"Thank you, Richard-man."

"I'm never talking to any of you ever again."

Noah and Henry laughed in unison, which was both unsettling and completely unsurprising. It was about then that Adam noticed that Ronan wasn't with them. He turned around and frowned when he saw Ronan several steps back, leaning over in almost precisely the position he took when he was particularly drunk and about to throw up. Against his better judgment, Adam jogged back to make sure he didn't vomit onto his shoes. But when he got there, Ronan didn't look sick at all.

"What are you doing?" Adam asked, perplexed, as Ronan picked up a worm that had squirmed its way onto the sidewalk during the storm.

Ronan didn't bother looking up at him. He just dropped the worm into the grass, took a step forward, and wrestled with a particularly slippery one until it too made its way off the sidewalk. "Fucking idiots," he said gruffly. "They get flooded out of their homes every time it rains and are too stupid to find their way back."

Adam blinked. "Are you going to rescue every worm we see on the sidewalk?"

"No," he said. "Some of them are already dead."

Adam stared as Ronan walked forward with his eyes glued to the sidewalk, stopping every few seconds to deposit a worm safely into the grass while their friends got farther and farther ahead of them. When it became obvious that Ronan really wasn't going to give this up, he held back a sigh and stooped over to start saving worms too. He was relieved when the grass next to the sidewalk changed into asphalt, and the number of worms decreased dramatically. Then Ronan lifted his head and strode forward at twice his usual pace as if nothing had happened, pausing only to quirk an eyebrow at Adam and ask if he was coming.

Adam was baffled once again by Ronan's capacity for warmth. But he came.

They had just caught up to the others when Noah winced and stumbled for no apparent reason. Henry grabbed his arm and steadied him with a frown. "Noah? Are you okay?"

Noah rubbed at his forehead and offered up a smile, but he wasn't looking at Henry. His gaze was fixed straight ahead at something beyond Gansey when he said, "Weird headache all of a sudden. I'm fine now."

"But—"

"Lynch!" the something-beyond-Gansey said. "Didn't think I'd run into you so soon."

Ronan stopped dead, the look in his eyes so murderous that Adam forgot all about worms and drawings and Ronan's capacity for warmth. "Kavinsky. What the fuck are you doing here?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: That worm scene was one of the first scenes I thought of for this fic, back when I still figured it was going to be a pre-series oneshot. (Lol, how things have changed since then.) Rescuing worms that have ended up on the sidewalk after storms is something of a family tradition for me, and I was doing it after a particularly loud thunderstorm when it occurred to me that it was definitely a Thing Ronan Lynch Would Do. And now here we are lol
> 
> Find me on the [tumblr](http://actuallymollyweasley.tumblr.com) if you'd like to come chat!
> 
> EDIT: [@thehufflepuffshuffle](http://thehufflepuffshuffle.tumblr.com) drew the gangsey sketch that I described in this chapter and it's abSOLUTELY PERFECT AND I CAN'T STOP SCREAMING ABOUT HOW ACCURATELY SHE NAILED THE WAY I ENVISIONED IT. PLEASE GO [LOOK AT IT](http://actuallymollyweasley.tumblr.com/post/150986055130/thehufflepuffshuffle-the-picture-hed-given) AND LOVE IT BECAUSE IT DESERVES ALL THE LOVE


	8. A Little Bit Like Falling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I haven't responded to all the comments from last chapter yet, this week's been crazy! I'll get to them today, hopefully <3
> 
> Also, this chapter has a lot of Kavinsky, so expect some violence and unrequited sexual innuendos. If you think that might be triggering or make you feel too uncomfortable, hmu on tumblr and I'll give you a summary of the chapter!
> 
> As usual [@pygmytyrants](http://pygmytyrants.tumblr.com) is an excellent beta

Kavinsky's laugh made Ronan shudder. "Life's awfully boring without you around, Lynch. Figured I'd drive up to visit you for the weekend."

Ronan almost snorted when Gansey subtly shifted to stand between him and Kavinsky, as if he were capable of appearing threatening. "Ronan," he said doubtfully, "do you know him?"

Ronan could understand Gansey's confusion. Kavinsky's clothes were expensive and black, his smile was sharper than broken glass, and he had four piercings in his left ear. He looked very much like someone Ronan would associate with now. He looked nothing like someone Ronan would have associated with when his father was alive.

But Ronan had never associated with Kavinsky because of his appearance.

"I don't know what made you think you could show up here," he said, clenching his fists, "but I thought I made it clear that I wasn't fucking interested."

"No," Kavinsky said, dropping his smile in favor of a curled lip and hard eyes. "Niall Lynch was the one who said you weren't fucking interested. Now that he's dead, I thought _you_ might feel differently."

Ronan shoved his fists into his pockets and leaned forward onto the balls of his feet, matching Kavinsky's hard eyes with a glare of his own. "You thought wrong."

"You sure about that? The company you're keeping right now looks pretty boring."

Blue crossed her arms, transforming into five feet of righteous fury with a single scowl. Ronan found himself liking her a little better for it. Then he was pissed with himself for liking her at all. "I don't know who the fuck you think you are," she huffed, "but you're obviously incapable of taking a hint, so I'll spell it out for you. Get the fuck away from Ronan, and don't bother him again."

"Getting a midget to fight your battles, Lynch?" Kavinsky didn't bother hiding his amusement. "Classy."

"You wouldn't know what classy was if it fucked you in the backseat of your shitty car," Ronan said.

Kavinsky laughed again. "That's true." He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and saluted Ronan with it before sticking it in his mouth. "Listen, you're hungry. I get it. It's put you in a pissy mood. I'll just talk to you later."

"Like hell you will," Blue said angrily.

He sneered and lit his cigarette."Next time," he said, "don't bring the midget."

Ronan grabbed Blue's wrist before she could punch him. He didn't like her, but that didn't mean he wanted to see her get murdered. "Fuck off, Kavinsky."

"Gladly." When he walked past, Kavinsky made sure to blow smoke directly in Ronan's face.

Ronan fucking hated smokers.

Everyone stood there and stared at Ronan long after Kavinsky had left. Ronan stared back, rage and hostility pouring off him in waves. It took a while, but eventually Gansey took the hint. He cleared his throat and attempted a cheery smile. "Well. Shall we go inside, then?"

They went inside.

Ronan hoped that that would be the end of it, but he had only taken two bites of his first slice of pizza when Gansey steepled his fingers and said, "Are we going to talk about this?"

Ronan swallowed his second bite and took a third, just so he could put as much food in his mouth as possible before speaking. "There's nothing to talk about."

Gansey narrowed his eyes. "First of all, that's disgusting." Ronan shrugged. "Second of all, there's definitely something to talk about. Who the hell was that?"

Ronan considered the pros and cons of speaking with his mouth full again and decided against it. He swallowed. "Joseph Kavinsky. Piece of shit. Not your concern." He gestured with his pizza for emphasis. "Take your pick."

"If he's going to be here for the entire weekend, then he is absolutely my concern." Gansey frowned. "Is he going to keep bothering you?"

"Gansey," Ronan said with exasperation, "I can handle Kavinsky. Don't worry about him."

"But if he's going to be a bad influence—"

"A _bad influence_? You've got to be kidding me," Ronan spit. "'Don't do drugs.' 'Don't drink and drive.' 'Don't get in with the wrong crowd.' You can stop with the fucking lectures, Gansey. You're not my dad."

Gansey flinched, and for a very short moment, Ronan felt guilty. "I know that," he said quietly.

The moment passed. "Good," Ronan said. "Shut the fuck up about Kavinsky, then."

Gansey opened his mouth as if about to respond, then bit his lip and looked down at the table instead.

Henry gulped down a few sips of Diet Coke very loudly to fill the silence, and then he said, "So. Any plans for Halloween yet?"

Gansey looked back up and smiled, obviously grateful for the subject change. He offered up a few daytime plans, Noah chattered on about all the parties he could get them invited to, and Blue chimed in with costume ideas. Only Adam remained silent, watching Ronan with an intensity that made him uncomfortable. He responded by eating another slice of pizza and glaring back until Adam shook his head and turned back to Blue.

A few minutes later, he felt a buzz in his pocket. He knew it was Kavinsky. He knew he shouldn't look, let alone respond. But the entire conversation with Gansey pissed him off so much that he pulled his phone out anyway.

_fifth+main. 11pm.  y/n._

Ronan didn't hesitate. **yes.**

* * *

There was something immensely satisfying, Ronan thought, about driving to a race in his shark-gray BMW. He had raced in it before. He'd raced _Kavinsky_ in it before. But it had always been his father's car then. Now it was his. His gears to shift, his accelerator to slam, his tires to squeal. If he won, he'd be the only one to claim the victory. If he crashed, he'd be the only one to get hurt. He liked racing better this way.

He arrived at the corner of Fifth and Main at exactly 11:03, according to his dashboard clock. A white Mitsubishi pulled up on his left side at 11:09.

"You're late, asshole."

Kavinsky grinned at him with just enough wildness for Ronan to know he was high. On what, Ronan didn't know, and he didn't particularly care. "Did you miss me, Lynch?"

11:10.

The light went red.

Ronan shifted out of park and into drive, keeping his foot ready on the accelerator.

"Do you even know where we're going?"

"Who fucking cares!" Kavinsky whooped. "I'm going to destroy you."

Ronan snorted.

11:11.

Kavinsky was apparently watching the clock as much as Ronan was. "Make a wish, you piece of shit!"

Ronan leaned over and stuck his fist out the window, deliberately raising a single finger.

Kavinsky howled with laughter.

Ronan pulled his arm back in and rolled the window up.

The light turned green, and they were off.

Ronan grinned without meaning to, seeing nothing but an open stretch of road, feeling nothing but his steering wheel in one hand and his gear shift in the other, hearing nothing but the roar of wind outside his car. He wondered if this was happiness, and if it was, how he could capture it in a painting. The howling wind could be streaks of white paint, maybe, and the road was obviously a solid stripe of black. But how to depict his mind emptying and focusing only on darkness and driving and the screaming driver in the car beside him, and how to convey the freedom that accompanied that emptiness?

Kavinsky pulled ahead when Ronan shifted into third gear, but he wasn't worried. Kavinsky always jammed the shift from third to fourth. He'd done it two years ago, and he would do it now. He was a piece of shit, but he was a predictable piece of shit.

Sure enough, Kavinsky screwed up the next gear shift, and Ronan darted in front of him with a laugh. The next few minutes were bliss as his car sped forward, unfeeling, unrelenting, unstoppable. He pulled off the road when the scenery changed from apartment buildings to empty fields and waited alone for Kavinsky to catch up.

Unfeeling. Empty. Alone.

No, Ronan mused, this probably wasn't happiness. Exhilaration, though. Adrenaline. Excitement. It was that.

Maybe he could still paint this for his stupid fucking art class.

Kavinsky skidded to a stop in front of him, so close that his side mirror grazed Ronan's elbow. The way he launched himself out of the vehicle had him looking more like a ungainly rottweiler than a twenty-year-old man who was supposed to be at the preppy private school his parents had bribed him into attending. "Not bad, Lynch," he said with a lopsided grin that was more drugs than actual amusement. "Rematch?"

Ronan just stared at him, unimpressed. "It's not a rematch if there's no competition."

"Ouch." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a packet of white dust. "Want to level the playing field?"

"No."

Kavinsky held out the packet for a few more seconds, but when Ronan's expression didn't change, he shrugged and pocketed it. "Your loss." He stuck his upper body in the backseat and withdrew with a case of beer and his broken-glass grin back in place. "Don't tell me college has turned you into such a prick that you won't drink beer."

Ronan pulled out a bottle and wrinkled his nose with distaste when he saw that it was a screw-top. That didn't stop him from opening it and taking a swig.

"This beer tastes like shit."

"You taste like shit." Kavinsky was already halfway through his first bottle and unscrewing a second as he spoke. "Or I assume you do. If you want to know for sure, I'd be happy to find out for you."

Ronan took another sip of beer. "No."

"You're no fun anymore, Lynch." Kavinsky finished off his bottle and sighed. "Your boyfriend's ruined you."

Ronan rolled his eyes. "I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about."

"Come on, Lynch, don't tell me you've started lying now too." Ronan put his beer bottle back up to his lips. "Polo shirt? Boat shoes? Perfect fucking teeth?"

Ronan spit beer all over Kavinsky's Mitsubishi. " _Gansey_?" he sputtered, unsure whether to be amused or horrified by the implication. "No."

Kavinsky licked a stray drop of beer off the side of his bottle. "Come on, Lynch," he repeated. "Guys don't look at each other the way you looked at— _Gansey_? Is that actually his name? That's disgusting—unless they're blowing them."

Ronan just shook his head. "I think your head might have been too far up your ass during that conversation for you to see properly. I have not and will never be blowing Gansey."

"Unrequited, then? Poor Lynch. Cry me a fucking river. Have another beer."

"Not unrequited," Ronan said, helping himself to another beer anyway because there was a possibility that it might taste less shitty if he got more drunk. "Nonexistent. That's not what Gansey is to me."

"Okay," Kavinsky said, and placed his second empty bottle next to his first on the roof of his car. "Okay, fine, you and _Gansey_ are disgustingly platonic. But that doesn't mean you don't swing that way."

Ronan had a sudden vision of dusty hair and freckled hands and the piercing blue eyes of a boy who knew about his dreams. "No, it doesn't."

"Then I don't see why we can't find out if you're classy after all."

It took a moment for Ronan to figure out what Kavinsky was talking about. _You wouldn't know what classy was if it fucked you in the backseat of your shitty car._ Suddenly, his grimace had nothing to do with the shitty aftertaste of warm beer in his mouth. "Because I have not and will never be interested in you either."

Kavinsky's grin dropped off his face, and he swept his empty beer bottles off his car in a crash that made Ronan jump. But the outburst was over as quickly as it had begun, and then Kavinsky was sliding onto the hood of his car and looking at Ronan expectantly. Ronan toted the case of beers over to him, but he put them down next to Kavinsky and leaned against the hood instead of taking a seat there himself. If Kavinsky noticed the added distance, he didn't comment on it.

"We used to have some serious fucking fun, didn't we, Lynch?" he said, cracking open another bottle. "Cars and drugs and beers and dreams."

Ronan scoffed. "Yeah," he said, "and almost dying. That part was definitely fun."

"Of course. The risk was what made it interesting, Ronan." Ronan made a face at hearing the way his first name sounded in Kavinsky's drunken mouth. The idiot, high as he was, mistook the disgust for caution and said, "I know what I'm doing now, Ronan. I know how much is safe to take. You wouldn't have to worry this time."

"You said you knew what you were doing last time, too," Ronan reminded him. "Besides, I don't need your fucking pills anymore."

"Doesn't need my fucking pills, doesn't want my fucking drugs, doesn't want my fucking at all." Kavinsky's mouth settled into a thin, hard line with jagged edges that could cut glass, or Ronan, or himself. "Well, what _do_ you fucking want, Lynch? Why'd you even come out here?"

Ronan thought about it. "I came out here," he said finally, "to see if you still don't know how to shift into fourth gear. And because I knew it would piss off Gansey."

" _Gansey_ again? If you're seriously not blowing him, then this is just the saddest thing I've ever fucking heard."

"Almost as sad," Ronan said, "as you driving all the way up here just to get rejected."

Kavinsky stilled. "Is that what this is?"

"You mean you still don't know?" Ronan was incredulous. "Shit, Sargent was right, you really do need things spelled out. Listen up, then. I didn't want you two years ago, and I sure as fuck don't want you now. So go drive back to your shitty private school and pray that they don't confiscate the precious fucking pills that you don't know how to live without." He paused. "Was that clear enough for you?"

For a long moment, neither of them moved. Then Kavinsky said, "Get off my car."

"I'm not—"

" _If you're so sure that you don't want anything from me, then stop leaning against my fucking car._ "

Ronan stepped back, suddenly wary of the glint in Kavinsky's eye and the pills still sticking out of his jacket pocket. As soon as he moved, Kavinsky was off the hood in a flash, practically throwing the rest of the case of beer into the passenger seat and hurling himself into the driver's seat with just as much force. He was revving up the Mitsubishi and speeding out of the empty field before Ronan could say "good fucking riddance."

And he would have been perfectly fine with that—if the fucking asshole hadn't turned around, sped back, and crashed directly into Ronan's BMW just as he was putting on his seatbelt.

For three awful seconds, Ronan saw red and couldn't figure out if it was anger or blood. But then his vision cleared, and the dim light of the quarter moon was enough for him to see that his airbag was still a pristine white.

Anger, then.

That worked for Ronan.

He practically fell out of his car, clumsy and unbalanced. His brain had moved on from _shit-am-I-dead_ to _what-did-Kavinsky-do-to-my-fucking-car_ , but his hands and knees were still shaking from the adrenaline rush of the impact. That didn't stop him from yanking open Kavinsky's door and dragging him out onto the field so he could beat the shit out of him.

It took a second for him to realize that the ringing in his ears was Kavinsky's laughter as Ronan's fist smashed into his jaw, and then the taller man was elbowing Ronan in the gut and breaking free of his grip while he was winded.

The rest of the fight was quick and dirty and ended with Kavinsky straddling Ronan's back, his arms twisted up behind him. "You know," he said, "we could have found ourselves in this position under much better circumstances if you weren't such a stubborn asshole."

Ronan tried and failed not to gag. Kavinsky laughed at his own joke, though—throwing his head back and everything—and it affected his balance so much that Ronan was able to yank his arms free and push himself off the ground, shoving Kavinsky off his back with the force of his movements. Then he put one knee on Kavinsky's chest and one forearm against his throat and said, "If you come close to me or my car ever again, I will fucking kill you."

"The risk is what makes it interesting," Kavinsky said. But when Ronan stole three beers from his case, picked him up by his shirt collar, and shoved him into the Mitsubishi's driver seat, he drove away and didn't come back this time, leaving Ronan to inspect the damage to his car.

It wasn't _quite_ a disaster, but it came pretty damn close.

There was a massive dent in the bumper. The door to his trunk was so misshapen that it no longer closed properly. One of his taillights was shattered, and to top it all off, the paint was scratched on the left backseat door from when Kavinsky had thrown a beer bottle at Ronan during their brief fight. Ronan had dodged, but his car hadn't been quite that lucky.

 _His car_.

Who was Ronan kidding? This wasn't _his_ car, any more than the Barns were _his_ Barns. This was his father's car, whether Niall Lynch was dead or alive, and he had just wrecked it because he hadn't stayed away from Joseph Kavinsky like he was supposed to.

For one heart-stopping second, Ronan thought he was going to cry.

But that was stupid, because he hadn't cried at his dad's funeral, and he hadn't cried when the lawyers kicked him out of the Barns, so he certainly wasn't going to cry over a fucked-up bumper. In the end, he settled for resting his head against the ruined paint and drinking Kavinsky's disgusting beers until he fell asleep.

* * *

In his dreams, night horrors tore him to pieces and stuffed his remains into the trunk of a mutilated BMW.

In reality, Ronan woke up with a crick in his neck, a pounding headache, and an exact copy of Kavinsky's newest earring in his hand, as well as approximately fifteen different mosquito bites. He found a temporary, savage satisfaction in systematically twisting apart the earring until it was nothing more than an ugly clump of wire—he cut his fingers on its sharp edges twice in the process, but it was worth it—before chugging down the last of his warm beer and poking the airbag out of the way so he could get into the driver's seat.

It seemed to take much longer to drive back to town than it had to leave. Ronan wasn't sure if that was because he was hungover and extremely sore, or because he was actually attempting to drive the speed limit for once. At this point, getting pulled over while empty beer bottles were scattered on the floor of his car was both the last thing Ronan needed and a valid concern, considering how shitty his luck had been since yesterday. Fortunately, it was either too early or too late for cops to be sitting on the side of the road, so Ronan made it to the garage that Adam worked at without incident.

(It wasn't that Ronan _wanted_ Adam to know how royally he'd fucked up. But they lived in a small college town, and if this wasn't the only car garage in the city, then it was definitely the only one that he felt comfortable leaving his father's car in without worrying about it being chopped up and sold for parts.)

(Besides. As aggravating as Adam was, Ronan was reasonably certain that he didn't hate Ronan enough to destroy his car.)

Once again, it was either too early or too late for even workaholic Adam Parrish to be on shift. The owner of the garage was there, however, and he was kind—or smart—enough not to ask about Ronan's bloody knuckles or black eye. He just took the keys to the car, _tsk_ ed at the damage, and promised Ronan that it would be repaired within two weeks. (It was possible that the two hundred dollars Ronan had paid upfront were a large part of the reason he'd been so willing to keep his silence.) He offered to let Ronan rent a car while the BMW was out of commission, but Ronan took one look at the boring, ugly vehicles in the lot, imagined his father's disappointed stare, and declined as politely as he possibly could. The owner then offered to give Ronan a ride back to campus. _That_ , Ronan was quick to accept. The thought of telling Gansey about all this was already enough to make him feel vaguely ill. The thought of Gansey actually seeing the aftermath made Ronan wonder how much more the owner would charge if he threw up in his car.

He pretended that the twist in his gut was residual queasiness and guilt from leaving his car behind (and not regret that he hadn't seen Adam at the garage) for the entire ride.

* * *

By the time the owner dropped him off at Walton, Ronan just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep off his hangover. He was also reasonably certain that the morning couldn't get any worse.

Then he stepped into the parking lot and saw the white Mitsubishi parked in the corner.

 _Fuck it_ , Ronan thought, _I'll walk to Adam's dorm._

But Joseph fucking Kavinsky had already seen him.

The white-hot anger that had subsided during the drive back into town reignited stronger than before, and Ronan was honestly ready to make good on his earlier threat before he remembered the half-dozen students loitering in the parking lot. He had to settle for emitting all of his rage in a single, seething snarl. "What part of your _fucked-up shithole of a brain_ made you come here? How did you even know where to find me?"

"Asked around," he said. "I found out this was the only dorm with suites, and then I knew there was no way you'd be anywhere else."

Ronan had to work very hard to keep his fists clenched at his sides and not rammed into Kavinsky's throat. "If you need help finding the highway, I'm sure you can _ask around_ for that too. So fuck off."

"Ronan." Kavinsky looked almost hurt, which might have bothered Ronan if his father's car wasn't still sitting in a garage three miles away. "I'm sorry about what happened last night. I didn't mean any of it. I just want—"

"I don't care about what you want," Ronan said, so angry that he forgot to swear. "I care about what I want, which is for you to fuck off."

"Doesn't high school mean anything to you? I taught you everything you know. I taught you how to race. I taught you how to have _real fucking fun_. Fuck, Lynch, I taught you how to take things from your _dreams_. After everything I did for you, don't I deserve another chance?"

Kavinsky tugged at Ronan's wristbands—at the wristbands that _Adam_ had given him—and Ronan's control snapped. He punched Kavinsky in the throat after all and pressed him up against the trunk of his Mitsubishi before the fucking asshole could blink.

"You didn't do a fucking thing for me," Ronan growled. "You taught me how to _steal_ dream-things, but I don't steal them anymore."

"What?" Kavinsky spluttered, struggling to breathe with Ronan's arm pressed against his neck. "But then how—"

" _I fucking ask_ ," Ronan snarled. "So stop acting like you mean a damn thing to me, and _fuck. Off._ " He punched him again, just for good measure, and added, "And asshole? My _dad_ taught me how to race. _You_ still can't use a fucking stick shift."

Having to walk away before he strangled Kavinsky altogether just pissed Ronan off more. Even discovering that the front of Kavinsky's Mitsubishi was as ruined as the back of his dad's BMW didn't satisfy him. All of the students who had witnessed the confrontation were smart enough to avoid his eyes and steer clear, which was fortunate because Ronan didn't want to find out what would happen to the next person who tried to talk to him. He banged his way into Walton and thundered up the stairs as loudly as he could to minimize the possibility of human interaction. Every door he opened was slammed shut. Every corner he passed was kicked. Ronan was a bomb with a very short fuse, and the only reason he was glad to reach his suite door was that he thought he might put a hole through his bedroom wall if he threw a beer bottle at it, and it was unlikely but possible that breaking something else would make breaking his father's car hurt less.

It was for that reason that he yanked a beer out of the kitchen fridge, and it was for that reason that he hurled it across his bedroom before he'd even gotten the door completely open.

He hadn't expected Adam Parrish to be standing in the way.

By the time Ronan noticed him, there was probably half a second before the beer bottle would smash his head in.

In that half a second, Ronan Lynch realized three things.

One: Adam was staring at the wall where Ronan hung all his art, which meant that he'd definitely seen the picture that Ronan had drawn of him yesterday, which fucking sucked because he'd probably discovered what Ronan himself had just figured out, which was that—

Two: Ronan didn't just think Adam was stubbornly interesting. He was fucking in love with him.

Three: Throwing that beer bottle really was going to break something else, and it was not going to make breaking his father's car hurt less.

Then, impossibly, Adam ducked.

The beer bottle sailed over him.

Ronan's body did not know how to react to the fact that Adam Parrish was still alive.

Apparently Adam's did, though, because he was tucked next to the bed with his knees pulled up against his chest by the time the bottle smashed harmlessly against Ronan's bedroom wall.

It didn't even leave a dent. Just a sopping wet smear of amber liquid and the overwhelming stench of alcohol, and Ronan's room had already smelled like alcohol anyway.

The smell jolted Ronan into action, and he took one jerky step towards Adam before his earlier rage overwhelmed every other feeling.

"I don't know what the fuck you think you're doing here," he growled, "but you need to get out. _Right now._ "

It was so much like what he'd said to Kavinsky that Ronan expected Adam to make protests of his own, to demand explanations or apologies or—or _something_.

But he didn't.

Adam was curled up into a ball like the world was ending, but when Ronan told him to get out, he uncurled himself and stood up. For a long, slow, painful moment, he looked at Ronan with parted lips and a burning gaze that Ronan couldn't begin to understand. But maybe the scowl on his face was so dark, so threatening, so damaging that even professional smartass Adam Parrish didn't want to risk antagonizing him, because he left without saying a word.

Adam had told him once that he thought Ronan was more than just his anger. When he heard the door to the suite slam shut, Ronan was certain that Adam no longer felt that way.

Proving professional genius Adam Parrish wrong didn't feel as good as Ronan thought it was supposed to.

It felt, actually, a little bit like falling apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly I treasure every comment you guys write me, you're always so nice! Sorry I haven't responded to all the comments from last chapter yet (this week's been crazy) but I've read and loved all of them and I'll hopefully have time to respond today <3
> 
> Also, feel free to find me on [tumblr](http://actuallymollyweasley.tumblr.com) if you want to come chat for any reason whatsoever


	9. Like Another Kick to the Ribs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for this chapter include abuse and extremely negative self-deprecation. As always, feel free to message me on [tumblr](http://actuallymollyweasley.tumblr.com) if that's triggering for you and you'd rather have a chapter summary instead.
> 
> [@pygmytyrants](http://pygmytyrants.tumblr.com): queen of beta-ing and also of life

Adam spent exactly two hours and forty-seven minutes being angry. Being _pissed_. At Ronan. For throwing a beer bottle at Adam's head, for making him feel like his father always had, for making him leave while he was still remembering how to breathe, for not apologizing for something that could have killed him.

He stopped being pissed when he realized that he was the one who needed to apologize.

He hadn't meant to stay in Ronan's room for so long. He hadn't planned on entering it at all, actually. But then Gansey had called him at 9 a.m. that Sunday morning, just as Adam was finishing his breakfast, and said, "Ronan didn't come back last night. And I ran into Janet Coalfield, and she said that he wasn't in church."

There was a time when Adam would have listened to Gansey's call and then savored his last three bites of cereal, taking advantage of every calorie his meal plan had to offer. There was a time when he would have reluctantly promised to check the usual places and then trudged out of the dining hall, resigned to wasting an hour searching before telling Gansey that Ronan Lynch would be found when he wanted to be found.

But just over a month ago, Ronan had slashed through his own wrists and nearly died.

And he never missed church.

Adam threw away the rest of his breakfast and said, "Where do you need me to look?" Gansey was still rambling on the other end of the line, frantic and harried and quietly terrified, and Adam had to resist the urge to shout at him. " _Gansey_ ," he said as calmly as he could. "Where do you need me to look?"

There was a pause.

"Adam," Gansey said very softly, "I've been out looking for Ronan for an hour. I'm on the other side of campus."

This was useless. "So?"

" _So_ "—Gansey sucked in a breath—"Ronan might be back in our room by now."

"Okay," Adam said, "do you want me to look there first, then?"

Gansey's voice was strained. "I couldn't ask that of you."

Understanding knocked the air out of Adam. The last time Gansey had gone looking for Ronan, he'd found him in their room—in a puddle of his own blood.

He swallowed hard. "You're on the other side of campus?"

Gansey's "yes" was barely audible.

"Then I'm closer," Adam said. "I'll check."

"Adam—"

"He's probably fine," he said firmly, reassuring himself as much as Gansey. "And if he isn't, he'll need to get to the hospital as soon as possible. Either way, it makes more sense for me to go."

" _Adam_ —"

"Keep searching," he ordered. "I'll let you know if I find him."

In the ensuing silence, Adam set off towards Walton. He'd covered half of the distance between the dining hall and the dorm by the time Gansey said, "Likewise. And… thank you."

Adam didn't know quite how to respond to that. It was only logical that he check their rooms, and the fact that Gansey hadn't wanted him to go baffled and concerned him in equal amounts. Adam didn't know which was more painful—imagining what Gansey might have seen, or finding out that he would rather see it all over again than subject Adam to the same discovery. "I'm sure he's fine, Gansey," he said eventually.

Then he hung up, and he was outside of Walton.

Their student key cards gave them access to any dorm building, but Adam could only get into Gansey and Ronan's suite because their lock was slightly broken, and if he jimmied the doorknob in just the right way, he could pop the door open. He still didn't know if the door had been that way when they arrived or if Ronan had broken it at some point, but either way, neither Gansey nor Ronan had any interest in getting it repaired. Adam thought they were crazy, but he had to admit that it came in handy sometimes.

After getting through the door, Adam's first reaction was relief that Ronan wasn't in the living room or kitchen nook. His second reaction was apprehension, because this was a suite and there were still three other rooms to check.

"Ronan?" he called out.

There was no answer, but that didn't mean anything. He'd seen firsthand how deeply Ronan could sleep, especially if he was dreaming something up. He checked Gansey's room and the bathroom first, just to be thorough, but deep down Adam knew the instant he walked in that if Ronan was anywhere in the suite, he was drunkenly passed out on his bed.

He also knew that Ronan adamantly refused to let anyone into his room, but desperate times called for desperate measures. With a silent apology to Ronan, Adam told himself that he would only open the door wide enough to verify that Ronan wasn't inside before notifying Gansey and moving on.

Then he actually looked, and all of Adam's reservations morphed into awe.

Ronan Lynch's bedroom was a playground for dreamers. Impossible objects of every shape and size, from tiny self-bouncing balls to a skateboard that rolled without wheels, filled each corner and spilled across the floor. Irish band posters and speeding tickets hung next to glowing lights with no discernible source of electricity and a clock frozen in time. The room seemed wondrous, whimsical, and pure until Adam noticed a dark stain next to Ronan's bed. It looked just like the mixture of blood and gasoline that had soaked into Adam's carpet last week and somehow seemed even more menacing under Ronan's dream lights.

Right after that realization, Adam started to notice other imperfections in the dreamer's playground—dream objects that listed to the wrong side, inventions that would be glorious if they weren't ripped or stained or broken, a suspiciously sharp-looking sword that was hopelessly bent out of shape. For the first time, he imagined what Ronan saw when he dreamed, and the results made him shudder. He had wondered, once or twice, how Ronan could ever bear being awake when he could dream up entire universes while he slept. But as he looked at that mangled sword, Adam began to question how Ronan could ever bear being _asleep_. His random stretches of insomnia no longer seemed strange.

Adam stared at that mangled sword until his peripheral vision caught on a drawing Ronan had tacked up nearby. As soon as Adam realized what it depicted, all thoughts of dreamers and nightmares and respectfully retreating from Ronan's room faded away.

The foreground of the drawing showed two boys tumbling raucously through a field of grass while a woman with a smile like summer watched their antics. Adam instantly identified them as Ronan's brothers and mother, even though he'd never seen any of them before—there was something of Ronan in the older boy's mischievous expression, and he'd heard Ronan describe his younger brother too many times not to recognize his innocent eyes and golden curls—and he was pretty sure that the building in the distance was one of Ronan's beloved Barns. But it was the middle ground that captured Adam's attention and held it, because the man in the middle ground was Niall Lynch.

If Ronan had been a less skilled artist, Adam would have mistaken the drawing for a self-portrait. Niall Lynch's wicked-blue eyes and statue-straight nose and razor-sharp grin were Ronan's through and through, or maybe all of Ronan's facial features were Niall's. But Adam knew that Niall wasn't Ronan for two reasons.

First, his features all belonged to the Ronan of before. They were amusement without bite, laughter without threat, sharp edges tempered by fondness. Adam hadn't seen that expression on Ronan's face since the first night they'd met.

Second, Niall had a little boy perched on his back, and that boy was unmistakably Ronan. His dark curls were long and untamed, his shoulders hunched up to his ears as his father reached back to tickle him. Despite his obvious discomfort, though, his open-mouthed laugh was wild and genuine, and the look he was giving his father held nothing but unconditional love.

Which was worse, Adam wondered. To have never felt the kind of love that the Lynches offered each other, or to grow up surrounded by that love, only to have it all ripped away in a single bloody morning?

The latter, probably. Adam couldn't miss what he didn't even understand.

His chest tightened, and he had to look away.

Unfortunately, looking away meant coming face-to-face with the other drawings Ronan had put up, and Adam wasn't prepared to see himself as part of that wall.

He didn't even recognize himself, at first. Those were definitely his hands, as battered and scarred as the rest of his Henrietta-raised body, and that was definitely his haircut, the only one that Adam had ever managed to execute on himself without looking like a deranged first-grader had attacked his head with scissors, and he couldn't deny that all of his facial features were drawn accurately. Still, something seemed off about the portrait. It was his ears—no, his nose—no, his shoulders—no, his posture.

Because Picture-Adam was leaning against the foot of a couch with one arm resting carelessly on his raised knee and his other leg stretched out in front of him and the slightest hint of a smile on his face, and Real-Adam knew that he had never looked that relaxed in his entire life.

It didn't make sense. This was the way he'd been sitting yesterday, so this must have been what Ronan was drawing when he hadn't let Adam follow the others into Gansey's room. But Picture-Adam looked calm and content and about as far from excited as he could get. Ronan had said he was needed for juxtaposition, but that didn't make sense either. There was nothing else in the drawing. Frowning, Adam took two more steps into the room so that he could take a closer look.

Those two steps saved his life.

Eighteen years of living with his parents had conditioned Adam to be aware of even the slightest movement in his peripheral vision, so when he saw the beer bottle flying toward his head, ducking was pure instinct. So was finding the nearest barrier—the bed—and curling up next to it to protect as much of his body as possible. He didn't know how his father had found him, but he could only hope that he wouldn't destroy any of Ronan's beautiful dream-things with his careless violence. It was Adam's fault, his fault, all his fault for going where he wasn't supposed to and seeing things that he wasn't supposed to and being stupid, so stupid, by not leaving when Ronan hadn't been there.

"I don't know what the fuck you think you're doing here, but you need to get out. _Right now_."

The words jolted Adam out of his haze of guilt and fear. His father had never wanted him to get out. His father had wanted him to stay stay stay in Henrietta, where he could be a punching bag and an extra source of income and a useless worthless piece of shit. That meant his father wasn't the one speaking; his father wasn't the one who had thrown the bottle.

Adam unfolded his body, stood up, and found himself staring into the angry face of Ronan Lynch.

Ronan's room, Ronan's dream things, Ronan's art had already been a lot to process. Seeing all that surrounding Ronan Lynch himself shut down Adam's brain entirely.

Because, once again, it didn't make _sense_. None of it made sense. This bedroom told the story of a boy who dreamed impossibilities into existence and captured truths on sketch paper and saw more beauty in Adam Parrish than he actually had to offer. But the person in front of him had bloody knuckles and a black eye and smelled like cheap alcohol and had thrown a beer bottle at Adam's head, and Adam left his bedroom furious with Real-Ronan for not being the Ronan Lynch that the story had promised.

It took two hours and nineteen minutes for Adam to remember the split-second of shocked horror that had softened Ronan's face before rage took over.

It took two hours and twenty-three minutes for Adam to consider that perhaps Ronan had thrown the beer bottle without knowing that a person was in the way.

At two hours and thirty-one minutes, Adam felt his pocket buzz with a text from Gansey. **Any sign of him yet?**

A wave of guilt stole a little of Adam's anger. _He showed up at the suite. Probably sleeping now. He's fine._

Two hours and thirty-five minutes had passed when Adam recalled that Ronan also had a bruise on his jaw, and it was very likely that he was not, in fact, fine. It was also very likely that at least some of the fury on his face had not been directed at Adam, but at life and the world in general and at whomever had bruised his jaw in particular.

At two hours and forty-six minutes, Adam realized it was quite possible that Story-Ronan and Real-Ronan weren't all that different. After all, he'd already caught glimpses of Story-Ronan on rain-soaked sidewalks and in careful sketches. And even Story-Ronan would be angry with Adam's blatant invasion of his privacy.

At two hours and forty-seven minutes, Adam realized that he owed Real-Ronan an apology.

* * *

Adam spent at least as much time figuring out what he wanted to say to Ronan as he had being angry with him.

Then he went to the dining hall with everyone, and Ronan didn't say a word to him.

Granted, Ronan didn't usually say very much to him while other people were around anyway. But he usually snuck in at least a few insults and one sarcastic comment, and that night he didn't even offer Adam his customary glare. Adam knew better than to try to get him alone for an apology. He figured he could always talk to him tomorrow.

But then Ronan avoided him over and over again until it was clear that he had no intention of stopping.

Adam hadn't realized how much he had gotten used to Ronan invading his dorm room until he felt the lack of his presence like an ache. It was disconcerting to have the freedom to study as late as he wanted without a sharp-edged asshole bullying him into going to bed. Even talking with Gansey and Blue was less enjoyable when he spent half of the conversation unsuccessfully trying to get a rise out of Ronan. Adam would have preferred anger. Ronan spent at least 80% of his time being angry anyway. He would have understood it a lot better than the emotionless silence he received instead.

On Tuesday, Adam finally accepted that Ronan no longer had any interest in associating with him.

Coincidentally, Tuesday was also the day that Adam went into work and discovered that Ronan had wrecked his BMW.

Except he really hadn't, because the _back_ of Ronan's car was ruined, not the front. That meant that someone else had rammed into Ronan, not the other way around, and as Adam looked closer, his frown deepened. Had Ronan been _in_ the car when it was hit this badly? Adam remembered Ronan's black eye and bruised jaw and wondered again about what had happened to him that night. If they were speaking, he would have asked. As it was, Adam settled for fixing Ronan's car as well as he could and hoping that seeing it might convince Ronan to listen to his apology.

Blue confronted him about it when he trudged into their room at ten p.m. on Thursday night and immediately slumped into his desk chair to finish up the paper he had due at midnight.

"Where were you?"

Adam shot her a quizzical glance and gestured at his coveralls and grease-stained hands. "Work."

"Again?"

"Yeah."

She frowned. "Why have you been spending so much time there recently? Are you running low on money? Is everything okay?"

It was such a Gansey-like concern that Adam smiled. "No. I've been fixing Ronan's car."

Blue's eyebrows shot up, and Adam was guiltily glad that at least Ronan hadn't only been avoiding _him_. "Ronan wrecked his car?"

"Someone else wrecked it," Adam corrected. "It was rear-ended."

"Okay, but how is that your problem? Why are you putting in overtime over this?"

Adam blinked. "He's our friend, Blue."

"Noah and Henry are our friends," she said. "Gansey's our friend." She flushed but quickly plowed through it while Adam watched with interest and some amusement. "You aren't even speaking to Ronan."

"Ronan isn't speaking to me," Adam corrected her again. "There's a difference."

"Whatever, you guys aren't speaking," she said impatiently. "So what happened? What did he do?"

Adam shook his head. "He didn't do anything. It's my fault."

Blue scoffed. "Yeah, right. Adam, even Gansey knows what Ronan is like. You don't have to pretend—"

"No, it's actually my fault," Adam said. For a moment, he wondered why he was even bothering to defend Ronan. Then he remembered worms and sketches and a pen that never ran out of ink, and he added, "I went into his room."

" _Oh_." Even Blue understood what a serious transgression that was. "Why?"

"He went missing again," he said. "On Sunday, remember?" She nodded. "I had to check to make sure he wasn't in his room, and… he came back while I was there."

"Oh," she said again. "So what was it like?"

"What?"

"Why won't he let anybody in there? There must be a reason."

"I can't tell you that," Adam said, shocked.

"Why not?"

"They're not my secrets to tell."

Blue opened her mouth, ready to protest again, but then she considered Adam more closely and sighed. "You're right. But that doesn't mean you have to wreck your health over this."

Adam refocused on his paper. "I don't know what you're talking about."

She reached over and tugged lightly on Adam's hair. "All this overtime is affecting your sleep schedule," she said pointedly. "Don't think I haven't noticed."

He shrugged. "I'm almost done anyway."

"You're just as stubborn as Ronan is. You realize that, right?"

"So are you," Adam said with a laugh. "You two should really get along better."

"Never," she said vehemently. But less than a minute later, she was pulling Adam's hair again and asking, "So, is Ronan okay? After his car got wrecked?"

Adam stared at the words on his laptop screen until they blurred together. "If he ever talks to me again," he said finally, "I'll let you know."

* * *

Adam finished repairing Ronan's car on Saturday morning, and his boss was so impressed by how quickly he'd completed the job that he let him have the rest of the weekend off. Adam didn't bother asking if he could stay to see Ronan's face when he got his car back. He knew Ronan didn't want to see him, and he wasn't going to push it. Instead he called Blue and followed her directions to Noah's room, which was a floor above Ronan and Gansey's. Apparently, Noah had put himself in charge of group costumes for Halloween, and Blue had volunteered to help make them. Adam wasn't sure if the combination was ingenious or incredibly dumb.

"Noah, I've been making my own clothes for ten years," Blue said hotly. "I know what I'm doing. And I _know_ that there is no possible way to make that design in real life."

"I know you _think_ that," Noah said, "but if you just added shoulder pads…"

Adam soon tuned them out in favor of looking at their bulleted list of ideas, clumsy sketches, and enthusiastic bickering. Ronan probably would have found the whole thing ridiculous, he figured, but he also would have found beauty in _something_ about the scene. The brightness of the costume designs, maybe, or the way Noah's glittery shoes caught the light. If Ronan could see beauty in a trailer park boy with dusty hair and a skin tone to match, he could definitely see it in their infinitely more vibrant and interesting friends.

Adam tried to do the same, but they still just looked like people to him.

Eventually, Blue and Noah wanted to take a break to get some afternoon ice cream, and Adam realized that he was still covered in grease from his morning at the car garage. "You go ahead," he said when they offered to wait for him. "I'll catch up when I'm clean again."

Blue laughed and agreed, and they parted ways in the Walton parking lot. Adam almost felt happy until he reached the floor of their room and came face to face with his father.

* * *

Robert Parrish looked just like Adam remembered, burly and beer-bellied and disappointed by his son's continued existence.

Adam carefully edged away from the stairs. "Wh—what are you doing here?"

"Some other worthless kid let me in," he said. "Why do you look surprised? I'm your father. He was happy to do it."

For a moment, Adam was sure that he heard ringing in his deaf ear. He shook his head, and the sound passed. "No, but— _why_ are you here?"

Robert Parrish stepped closer. "Don't act stupid. We haven't gotten a check from you yet."

Adam took another step back. "I don't know what you're talking about."

His father reached out and backhanded Adam across the face, sending him careening into the wall. Adam cursed himself for not anticipating the blow. He'd gotten too comfortable here. He'd forgotten that his father didn't always raise his voice before getting violent. "Don't act stupid," he said. "You know how much you owe us."

"Owe you?" Adam gasped out, desperately trying to regain his bearings and find a way past his father and into his room before this escalated too far. He could deal with this, he always dealt with this, but he didn't know what he would do if one of the other students in his dorm saw. The shame would be worse than the bruises. "I have a full scholarship—you don't have to pay for anything."

" _You don't have to pay for anything_ ," his father mocked, sounding disgusted. "What about all the years we fed you, clothed you, let you go to that awful school that gave you all these ideas about college? How much did we have to spend on you then?" He reached out, grabbed Adam's hair, and slammed his head against the wall. Adam's vision blacked out for a moment, but his right ear was still working, still listening helplessly as his father got louder and louder. "You owe us plenty. Look at you, with your fancy college and your fancy dorm and your fancy haircut. Your life is pretty cushy now, you worthless piece of shit. The least you can do is send us a check for all the shit we had to deal with because of you."

Adam only had one good ear, but it was facing the stairwell, and dorm stairs echoed like no other. He could hear footsteps. _He could hear footsteps._

Adam panicked. "Okay, let's just go into my room," he heard himself pleading. "We can go into my room, and I'll get my checkbook, and we can discuss specifics."

His vision was still fading in and out of focus, but he could hear the disgust in his father's voice when he said, " _Discuss specifics?_ You're even talking like a rich motherfucker now. Don't forget where you came from, you piece of shit. Pretend all you want, but it won't come to anything. You'll end up right back at the trailer park, begging for us to take you back, and will you still think you don't owe us anything then?"

Adam's vision sharpened just in time for him to see his father's hands wrap around his forearm, but too late for him to do anything but watch as he was yanked off his feet and hit the ground hard, his free arm going up instinctively to protect his head. He could survive breaking an arm, but if he got a concussion, that was it. He'd fall behind in his classes, he wouldn't be able to maintain his GPA, and he'd lose his scholarship. He'd be back in Henrietta, just like his father predicted.

"What, nothing to say for yourself?" A boot connected with Adam's ribs, making him wheeze. _Not my head_ , he pleaded. _Just stay away from my head_. "Tired of lying about who you are?"

"I'm not—"

"Don't interrupt me," his father ordered. "I'm not finished—"

And suddenly Ronan Lynch was at the top of the stairs, taking in the scene, and flooring Robert Parrish with a single aggressive punch.

Adam had never simultaneously been more grateful that Ronan knew how to fight and more terrified for him in his life. He watched as his father looked between them, disgusting and disgusted. Relief hit him like another kick to the ribs when he got up and left with nothing but a meaningful glare in Adam's direction. Horrified embarrassment didn't set in until a moment later.

Adam shifted into a more respectable sitting position and avoided Ronan's eyes as he cleared his throat and said, "Uh, thanks. You can go now."

Ronan said, "Give me your keys."

The words jolted Adam's gaze from Ronan's boots to his face and back again. "What?"

"Keys, Parrish."

Frowning, Adam pulled his keys out of his pocket and handed them to Ronan. Ronan disappeared into Adam's dorm and reappeared with ice and several wet washcloths a few moments later. Adam watched Ronan's hands in blank astonishment as he bundled ice into the various washcloths and handed one to Adam, saying, "Put this on your ribs," before pressing another washcloth to Adam's cheek and the last one to his wrist. The stinging chill was bliss on his growing bruises.

Adam swallowed hard, watching Ronan's intent gaze as he removed the washcloth on Adam's face to check the bruising. His hand was careful on Adam's chin as he tilted his face to the side. "Ronan…"

"Was that your father?"

Ronan's voice was soft but edged with fury. It startled Adam into saying, "Yes."

"How long has he been hitting you?"

Adam's stomach jerked unpleasantly. This was it. This was when Ronan found out what a terrible childhood Adam had had. This was when he became disgusted by what a pathetic loser Adam was and decided never to talk to him again.

Still, Adam couldn't bring himself to lie. Not to Ronan. Not to someone who held the truth in such high regard.

"Adam, how long has he been hitting you?"

"My whole life."

Ronan's fingers pressed harder against Adam's jaw, just for a moment, before they were skating along his bruised cheekbone so lightly that it didn't hurt. _Story-Ronan_ , Adam thought suddenly, and froze to make sure Ronan didn't stop.

But he did—when his fingers landed on a curl of hair just above Adam's ear. "Is he the reason you can't hear out of this ear?"

"Yes," Adam whispered, and clenched his fists in the hem of his t-shirt.

Ronan's other hand touched Adam's wrist bone. "What happened?"

"I… I tell everyone I fell down the stairs. It isn't a lie."

Ronan tugged at the strand of Adam's hair, and the movement was so similar to what Blue had done the other night that Adam almost smiled. But he didn't, just in case it made him stop doing this as well. "No, what happened after? Did you press charges?"

"Of course not," Adam said. "I was sixteen. I didn't have the money for a lawyer, for getting emancipated. I couldn't press charges when I didn't have anywhere to go."

Ronan's hands were shaking, Adam realized, as they continued their inspection of his injuries. He figured it was from anger, but he couldn't quite tell. "Didn't you know Blue back then?" he demanded. "Why didn't she do anything?"

Adam frowned. "I didn't let her. It was my problem to deal with, not hers, so _I_ dealt with it. I'm here, aren't I?" Ronan grumbled, but before he could say anything, Adam added, "Speaking of which, why are _you_ here?"

Ronan stared at him. "I was accepted."

Adam resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "No, _here._ " He gestured at the hall with his uninjured hand.

Ronan pulled his hands away and picked up the ice-filled washcloths again. Logically, Adam knew that the pressure of the cold ice was necessary to keep the swelling down. Illogically, he missed Ronan's hands. "You fixed my car."

Something like hope made an appearance in Adam's chest. He quickly squashed it before it got out of hand. "Yes," he said cautiously. "You brought it to the garage I work at. You had to know I'd be fixing it."

"The owner said it would take two weeks," Ronan said. "You did it in one."

Now that they were here, Adam wasn't sure he was brave enough to take the opening. Not after what Ronan had just seen. Not after what Ronan had just done for him. "I didn't have anything else to do," he said, but they both knew that was a lie.

Ronan set the washcloths down again and prodded Adam's face until he couldn't avoid his gaze any longer. "I threw a beer bottle at your head," he said, and it sounded like an apology.

"I was in your room," Adam responded, and that sounded like an apology too. "Also, I didn't think you did that on purpose."

"I didn't," Ronan agreed. "I was pissed about my car."

Adam was burning with curiosity about what had happened last week, but after acquiring some pretty bad bruises, Adam could understand why Ronan didn't want to talk about his. Instead, he reveled in the feeling of Ronan's fingertips on his skin. He didn't think he'd ever been touched so gently. It made it hard to believe that this was the same boy who hurled insults at him like greeting cards, and something about it made Adam swallow and say, "I think you should tell the others about your dreams. Or at least Gansey."

Ronan ripped his hands away like Adam was a firecracker he'd accidentally set off. For a very brief moment, Adam hated himself for bringing it up. Then Ronan said, "Fuck no," and he refocused.

"They're your friends, Ronan," he pointed out. "They'll probably think it's cool. It _is_ cool."

"Shut the fuck up, Parrish," Ronan grunted, but he said it the way he normally reserved for Noah.

There was a pause. Then, "What are you doing here alone on Saturday anyway?"

Adam became suddenly aware of his watch's insistent ticking and the sound of people laughing on the floor below him. He hadn't realized that he'd tuned out the rest of the world to focus on Ronan until it rudely demanded his attention again. "I was supposed to meet Blue and Noah for ice cream," he said. "Fuck."

Ronan grinned, fast and fierce. "Be glad you aren't meeting Gansey," he said. "He'd either forget or call you in a panic if you're more than five seconds late."

Adam's phone rang, and Ronan's grin turned into a laugh.

Adam let his phone ring for seven more seconds so he could listen to Ronan's laugh before picking up.

"Where are you?" Blue demanded over the phone. "Noah's on his second bowl already."

"I ran into Ronan," he informed her. "We're coming over now. Also, I think Gansey's wearing off on you."

"He is _not_ —"

Adam smiled and hung up.

"I never said I was coming," Ronan grumbled. But when Adam dumped the ice in the hall bathroom, washed his hands, and traipsed down the stairs, Ronan followed him out anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (bonus points if you noticed that Ronan called Adam by his first name for the first time in this chapter)
> 
> All right, I've got an important announcement to make: _Weekly updates are probably going to stop being a thing pretty soon._
> 
> I wish that wasn't the case, but I only have pre-written chapters up to ch. 11, and between college applications and rehearsals for the musical I'm in and general school-ish stuff, I've been having serious difficulties finding time to write. It sucks because I really do love writing this fic - I'm not running out of ideas or anything - but I physically cannot both keep up a weekly updating schedule and also sleep more than three hours a night. SO. Chapter 10 will still be posted next Sunday as usual, and then I'll probably post ch. 11 on Halloween because a) ch. 10 doesn't end on a cliffhanger or anything, so I think a slightly-longer-than-usual hiatus will be more bearable, and b) I recently realized that this fic has unintentionally been matching up with real time pretty well? Like, I started posting it in August right around when most people start college, and the first chapter is about starting college. So I kind of want to post the Halloween chapter on Halloween. :) After that, I honestly don't know when new updates will come out. But I'm hoping to have the entire fic finished before Christmas, and there will probably be about 16 chapters in all? So that's a rough (and optimistic) schedule estimate for all of you.
> 
> I know it's probably been nice to know when new chapters will be posted, and I'm sorry that I'm not going to be able to keep that up for the rest of the fic! Please don't hate me, and I hope that the as-yet-unwritten chapters will be worth the wait <3


	10. Anything but an Ending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I haven't responded to any of last week's comments! (Especially the guest who brought up concerns about abuse in this fic because that definitely deserves a well-thought-out response and I want to make sure I articulate my thoughts on what you mentioned as well as I can.) I've been pretty sick this past week (not anything serious, just general coughing and sneezing and not wanting to do anything but sleep pretty much all the time), so I haven't been on the internet much in general. I'll answer all of you ASAP :)
> 
> As always, much love goes out to my beta [@pygmytyrants](http://pygmytyrants.tumblr.com) for being the actual best

Gansey ran his thumb over his lip and frowned at Adam like he could figure him out with sheer force of will. He wasn't doing much, just sitting curled up in the corner of Gansey's couch to read his chemistry textbook, but…

"Adam," Gansey said carefully, "where did you get those bruises?"

He startled, jerking upright in a way that made his textbook slam shut on his thumb. He winced, and Gansey felt a surge of regret for adding to his catalogue of injuries. "I—"

"Gansey, how much do you know about colonial America?" Blue interrupted, flipping open her own school book and pointing it at him like a challenge. "Because I don't understand Virginia's class structures at all, and now my humanities class is kicking my ass." The message was clear:  _Don't bother Adam about this_.

Gansey looked from Blue to Adam to Ronan, his eyebrows furrowing. He knew he should respect Adam's privacy, but there was a bruise on his face and on his wrist and Ronan's knuckles were split. He'd thought they were starting to get along better, and they didn't seem to mind being in the same room now, but if this was going to be a problem, he felt obligated to try to fix it.

Ronan noticed Gansey staring and scowled at him. "Let it go, Dick."

By now, the unintentional confrontation had caught Henry's and Noah's attention too. Henry lifted his head from Noah's shoulder, and Noah started chewing a hangnail on his index finger, his eyes darting between all of them with curiosity or worry or maybe just understanding.

"I just—"

"It's fine, Gansey," Adam said, with a significant look at both Blue and Ronan. He cleared his throat, looked down at his chemistry textbook, and said, "I got these bruises because my father came to visit yesterday."

Everyone froze, almost in unison, as Adam explained his father's request for money and subsequent violence. He didn't  _say_  that it wasn't a one-time event, but the quiet resignation in his voice made that all too clear. Besides, Gansey still remembered a late night at a hospital and a whispered conversation that he'd pushed to the back of his mind as soon as they'd been allowed to see Ronan.

_I've been in the hospital a few times._

_Accident-prone?_

_Something like that._

He remembered, and ached, and felt all the air slowly squeeze out of his chest. But when Adam finished, Gansey noticed the way he was examining his fingernails instead of his friends' faces and made sure to say, "Thank you for telling us."

Adam shrugged and shot a glance at Ronan. “Honesty is important.”

“Fucking asshole,” Ronan said, but without any heat. Adam just stared at him until Ronan sighed and said, “ _Fine_. I have something to tell you too.”

Gansey thought of Ronan’s wrecked car and cuts splitting open Ronan’s wrist and large angry tattoos and felt his chest collapse even further. “What?”

Ronan stood up, went into his room, and came out with a ball of feathers. Gansey squinted at it, and the ball of feathers moved.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Is that a bird?”

“A raven,” Ronan confirmed, scratching under the small bird’s chin. It was a strangely gentle gesture. “Her name is Chainsaw, and I took her out of my dreams last night.”

Gansey forgot how to breathe.

Henry laughed and said, “Nice one, Lynch.”

Adam and Noah said in unison, “He’s not kidding.”

Adam leaned away from Noah and said, “What the hell? How do you keep doing that?”

Ronan cradled Chainsaw closer to his chest and said, “And how do you know I’m not kidding, anyway? I never told you.”

Noah traced a finger along Henry’s forearm. “Because I can read minds.”

Ronan jumped and almost dropped Chainsaw. Only Adam’s sudden grip on Ronan’s hand kept her supported. “What the fuck? Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“That’s fucking creepy, Czerny.” 

It was the angriest Gansey had ever heard Ronan sound while speaking to Noah, and it surprised everyone in the room.

“I don’t know why  _you’re_  so mad about this,” Noah said, a little petulantly. “You can take things out of your dreams. That’s at  _least_  as weird as reading minds.”

“But—”

“Ronan, Noah’s right,” Adam interrupted, albeit with a nervous look at Noah of his own. “I don’t think you have any room to talk.”

Ronan glared at both of them and perched Chainsaw on his shoulder. She cawed a feeble  _kerah_  at all of them and then snuggled into the crook of Ronan’s neck, strongly lessening the effect of his glare. Ronan scowled at her instead, but didn’t push her away.

“Wait,” Henry said, holding up a hand and sitting up straight on the couch for maybe the first time that Gansey could remember. “Let me get this straight.  _You_ ”—he pointed at Ronan—“can pull birds out of your dreams.”

“And other things,” Ronan acknowledged.

“And”—he turned to Noah—“you… you weren't joking all those times you said you could read my mind? _My boyfriend_   _can_   _read minds_?”

Noah nodded, looking nervously at the three inches of space Henry had just put between him and Noah. “You don’t… have a problem with that, do you?”

“Have a  _problem_  with that?” Henry repeated. “Noah, that’s  _awesome_! I mean, why am I telling you that? If you can tell what I'm thinking, then you know that I think that's _awesome_!”

A little of Noah’s smile returned. “It doesn’t work like that, babe. I can’t hear everything everyone’s thinking all the time; I’d go crazy. It’s more like… glimpses, sometimes. Random thoughts that people have, especially when they’re attached to strong emotions. Like… I knew Ronan got mad every time one of us got close to his room because he has a bunch of dream objects in there.”

Distracted from Noah for the briefest instant, Henry whirled around to Ronan with the largest smile Gansey had ever seen and said, “So now that we know, are we allowed into your room to see all your coolest dreams?”

Ronan laid a protective hand on Chainsaw’s head. “No.”

Henry shrugged and turned back to his boyfriend, enthusiasm undeterred. “Well? What else do you know?”

“Well, I’m very good at hearing  _your_  thoughts, which is why I started flirting with you back in high school,” Noah said shyly. He shot a fond smile at Blue and added, “And I know every time that Blue’s craving salted caramel gelato.”

She shot an equally fond smile back at him. “That always does come with a strong emotion attached to it,” she agreed. 

“You’re taking this awfully calmly,” Adam pointed out.

“Well, it makes sense,” she said. “Being psychic is the same way.”

“ _What_?” Henry gasped. “Blue Sargent, you’re  _psychic_?”

“No,” Blue said, furrowed eyebrows betraying her nonchalant tone. “My family is.”

“What?” Adam said. “Your mom isn’t faking all those tarot readings? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

Blue snorted. “Would you have believed me?”

Adam’s mouth clamped shut. He glanced from Blue to Ronan to Noah and, slowly, shook his head. “No. Probably not.”

“No shit, Parrish,” Ronan said. Then he hunched his shoulders, making Chainsaw  _kerah_  in indignation, and turned to Gansey. “What about you?”

Gansey looked between his friends—at Noah's eyes shining because Henry hadn't relinquished his grip on Noah's hand, at Blue crossing her arms to make it look like she hadn't just admitted a monumental truth, at the relief still evident on Adam's face because Chainsaw had taken the attention off of his own monumental truth, at Ronan running a finger across that raven's sleek wings with something like anxiety—and allowed a smile to grow on his face. “I think,” he said, “that if you can take ravens out of your dreams, and Noah can read minds, and Blue’s family can predict the future, then there is absolutely no reason why I can’t find an old tomb. Glendower is closer than ever.”

Ronan grinned right back at him. “You’re fucking right about that.”

“Your king awaits, Gansey-man!” Henry said. “We need to celebrate.”

“Well,” Noah said slyly, “Blue  _is_  craving salted caramel gelato right now.”

Blue’s laugh was the most magical sound of all. “It’s true. What do you say? Want to take my minivan?”

Gansey imagined Blue’s hands on a steering wheel and her feet on a gas pedal. He imagined that the gas pedal and steering wheel belonged to the Pig. The air supply in the room suddenly seemed lower than usual.

Noah shot a knowing smirk in Gansey’s direction— _Jesus Christ, he really could read minds_ —and said, “Actually, I’m in the mood to take a ride in Henry’s hybrid. Ronan, Adam, let’s go.”

Ronan took a step back, Chainsaw lurching precariously on his shoulder. “I’m not interested in third-wheeling in the car with you and Cheng.”

“You won’t be third-wheeling,” Noah said cheerfully. “Adam will be there too.” 

He dragged Ronan and Adam out of the room before either of them had another chance to protest. Henry shrugged and followed.

Gansey was suddenly intensely aware of the fact that Blue was sitting on the carpet just a few inches away and staring at him. He was even more intensely aware of the fact that he was staring back. 

“Blue, I—”

“You don’t think it’s weird?” she asked abruptly. “The fact that 300 Fox Way is full of psychics?”

“I think it’s magnificent.”

She swallowed hard. “And… and you believe me? That they’re actually psychic?”

“Of course,” he said, surprised. “It’s not any stranger than believing Ronan and Noah.”

“Oh. Okay, then.”

Her voice was too high. Gansey frowned. “Blue, are you all right?”

“Perfectly fine.” She did not sound perfectly fine. “We’d better go. Wouldn’t want to keep the others waiting.” She shot to her feet and bounded out of the room without meeting his eyes. Her silence and lack of eye contact lasted all the way until the gelato place, and then she cheerfully chatted and laughed with everyone except him. Gansey couldn’t help feeling like he had done something terribly wrong, although he couldn’t imagine what. Perhaps it had been selfish of him to bring up Glendower? Perhaps he had been insensitive about her family? 

Without knowing what he had done or how to fix things, sitting through gelato was excruciating. Getting to sleep was excruciating as well. Gansey tossed and turned and was considering getting up to peruse his journals again when his cell phone rang. He picked up gratefully, knowing full well that it was probably a telemarketer and knowing equally well that holding a conversation with a telemarketer was preferable to worrying about what he’d said to Blue.

“Hello?”

“Gansey?”

Gansey’s heart did strange things in his chest. “ _Blue_?”

“I’m not perfectly fine,” she admitted. “Come get me?”

A quick wave of relief washed over Gansey before concern settled in. “Of course. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

He was halfway to Adam and Blue’s dorm when embarrassment set in about his casual clothing and perpetually crooked glasses, but he reminded himself that getting to Blue was more urgent than combing his hair and kept driving. The thought kept his blush to a minimum when he saw Blue waiting at the curb, climbed out to meet her, and found himself trapped under the scrutiny of her stare.

“Are you wearing  _jeans_? And a  _t-shirt_?”

Gansey grimaced. “I’m afraid you’ve caught me at a bad time,” he admitted. “I was planning on doing laundry tomorrow.”

“No, I like it,” Blue said, and then froze. “I mean… it’s just too bad that you didn’t have to wash the boat shoes as well.”

Gansey hid his smile in his shoulder. “Jane,” he said lightly, “would you like to drive?”

She blinked. “Drive the Pig? Really?” He nodded. “I… all right.”

Their shoulders brushed as she walked past him to the driver seat. Gansey slid into the passenger side and admired the Camaro from this new perspective. “You do know how to drive a stick shift?”

“Of course,” she said. She placed one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the key in the ignition—Gansey shivered—and then turned back to him and said, “You’re right, this is a bad time. You were probably asleep.”

“I wasn’t,” he said truthfully.

“So.” The hint of a smile flitted across her face and was gone. “You don’t mind me driving to nowhere at 2 a.m.?”

“Not at all,” he said, trying not to sound too eager about it. “Drive as fast as you like.”

* * *

He’d said “drive as fast as you like.” 

He hadn’t expected her to drive like  _Ronan_.

They ended up at the parking lot in front of the Greek restaurant he’d taken her to over a month ago in about half the time it had taken him to get them there. Gansey spent at least fifteen seconds catching his breath. As soon as he leaned back in his seat, Blue turned off the engine, pulled the keys out of the ignition, and climbed out of the Camaro. Gansey found her sitting on the hood, legs folded under her and shoulders hunched so she could stuff her hands into the pockets of her ripped hoodie. 

She looked miserable. It made Gansey's heart jump into his throat. "Jane," he said gently, "would you like to tell me why you aren't perfectly fine?"

Her shoulders inched closer to her ears. "It's crazy, isn't it?" she asked. "Ronan taking things out of his dreams, Noah reading minds. There's an awful lot of magic in the world."

"There is," Gansey agreed. "But I figured you were used to it by now, if your whole family is psychic."

It was the wrong thing to say. Blue leaned forward so her spiky hair obscured her face and said, "I am. They are. That's the whole problem." 

He frowned. "I'm afraid I don't follow."

With a sigh, Blue pulled her hands out of her pockets and wrapped them around her torso instead. "Adam and I dated in high school, did you know that?"

Gansey remembered, stomach lurching, that there was a rule against friends dating other friends' exes. Then he remembered that Blue had never cared much for rules. So instead of giving into panic, he said, very calmly, "You did?"

She nodded. "Do you want to know why we broke up? He told me he loved me, and I—well, I loved him too, but as soon as he said it I realized that I didn't love him the way that he wanted me to. It took six months for him to be okay with that. For a while I thought he would never be."

"So then—"

"I don't want it to take six months for you to be okay with that," she blurted out. "I don't want you to never be okay with that."

Gansey tugged at his earlobe. "You're not interested."

"I'm interested," Blue said hopelessly, rubbing at her arms, "but that's all it's ever going to be."

Gansey stopped tugging. "What do you mean?"

"Every psychic I've ever known," Blue said, "has told me the same thing. Even the ones who are visiting from out of state. Even the ones who didn't know my mom had a daughter." She took a deep shuddering breath, dropped her hands into her lap, and recited, "'Your true love will die before you two ever meet.'"

Gansey's heart skidded to a stop, paused, and then restarted itself more wildly than before. "Blue—"

"You asked me if I believed in true love once," Blue interrupted, like she was afraid she'd never get another chance, "and for the longest time, I didn't because it was the only way I knew how to deal with it. Even when I dated Adam and didn't fall in love with him, I told myself it didn't mean anything. People break up for non-supernatural reasons all the time."

"Blue—"

"But if Ronan can pull things out of his dreams and Noah can read minds, then my family's psychic predictions can come true, and I don't want to start a relationship knowing that it has an expiration date."

" _Blue_ —"

"You can't ask me to do that, Gansey," Blue said fiercely, hands clenched in the sleeves of her hoodie. "It isn't fair. To me or you. I won't—"

" _JANE_."

The name startled Blue into a laugh that was half a sob. "I still don't understand why you call me that."

"Jane, look at me." 

Finally, she did, with red-rimmed eyes and a painful twist to her mouth and wetness that could be either tears or snot smeared all over her face. But those red-rimmed eyes were also vibrant and bright and reflected the flickering neon lights of the Greek restaurant sign, and the sight stole Gansey's breath for an entire second before he found the courage to say, "I don't want to presume anything. But I did die when I was ten years old."

Blue's lips parted in a silent  _oh_. "The hornets?"

"The hornets," Gansey confirmed. "My heart stopped for two minutes."

The blood drained from Blue's face, and Gansey worried that it was too much, too fast, too selfish, too assuming. Then she let go of her sleeves, lurched across the hood of the Pig, cupped her hands around Gansey's jaw, and caught his lips in a kiss. 

Earlier, Gansey had forgotten how to breathe. This kiss did the opposite. This kiss  _was_  breathing. 

It was a breath, and a sigh, and relief and joy and hope and a bright beginning or a bright middle or a bright anything-but-an-ending, all rolled into one. It was reassurances and the brush of a tongue and an  _I'm interested_ , and Gansey leaned forward and kissed her harder. 

Eventually, Blue pulled back and rested her forehead against Gansey's, breathing slightly faster than usual. "We can do this," she whispered. "We have a chance."

"We have a chance," Gansey agreed. 

In response, she tilted her head and kissed him again, and Gansey thought privately that dying was worth it if it meant he could have this. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will come on Halloween! (Or maybe the day before because I might be too busy on Actual Halloween :))
> 
> Feel free to find me on [tumblr](http://actuallymollyweasley.tumblr.com) if you so desire!
> 
> And here's a preview of ch. 11 since your wait will be longer than usual:  
>  _"You shouldn't worry about that," he said. "Nothing you create is going to scare me off."_


	11. Mostly Jagged Edges

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this chapter is coming out a day early! I'm not going to have time to post it tomorrow, and I figured you wouldn't mind an early update ;) Besides, Sunday is my normal posting day, so it makes sense to do it today. 
> 
> Shout-out to [@aroczerny](http://aroczerny.tumblr.com) on tumblr for inspiring me to figure out how to include Noah's and Henry's sexualities in this fic without it feeling manufactured.
> 
> Also, shout-out to @pygmytyrants for being a great beta and sounding board, as usual! You should all read her [fics](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hondayota/pseuds/hondayota) if you have time because she's amazing

Adam had expected Ronan's revelation about his dreams to seriously change the dynamic of their friend group. But it didn't, not really.

Maybe it was because Noah could read minds and Blue's family was psychic. Maybe knowing that the world's magic wasn't limited to Ronan Lynch made his specific brand of impossibility easier to accept. Maybe Adam's friends just believed in the inconceivable more willingly than he did. Either way, Blue and Gansey getting together had a much larger impact on the group than Ronan suddenly carrying around a dream-bird on his shoulder did, and that was only because Henry and Noah spent a solid fifteen minutes teasing them about how long it took.

As soon as they ran out of jokes about it, Noah leaned forward in his chair and said, "We should go camping this weekend."

Gansey frowned. "Isn't this weekend Halloween? I thought you wanted to make group costumes and go to parties."

"I _did_ ," Noah said, "but then I found out that Tad Carruthers' frat is hosting the party I wanted to go to, and I knew Ronan would refuse to go within a hundred-foot radius of that place."

Ronan scowled and said, "How did you know that? Did you read my mind again?" Adam still didn't understand why Ronan was so worked up about the mind-reading. Now that he'd told everyone about his dreams, Adam couldn't imagine that someone so unflinchingly honest had many other secrets to keep.

"I didn't have to read your mind," Noah said, rolling his eyes. "You complain about Tad Carruthers at least three times a week."

At that, Ronan stopped aiming his glare at Noah's face and pointed it at the ground instead. "He's fucking _annoying_."

"I know," Noah said, cheer creeping back into his voice. "I don't want to go anymore either. So let's go camping!"

"But why?"

"Because it's fun!" he exclaimed. "You get to build fires and roast marshmallows and pee in the woods. What's not to like?"

Blue frowned. "Have you ever actually been camping?"

"No," Noah said happily, "which will make this a great bonding experience! We can't have you and Gansey getting so unbearably couple-y that you start ignoring the rest of us, can we?"

"You and Henry have entire conversations in front of us without saying a word to each other," Adam felt the need to point out. "You just stare at each other for a while and then say something to us in unison."

"Which would be a lot more impressive," Henry said, "if Noah couldn't read my mind."

"I don't need to read your mind to know when you want to tease Gansey," Noah grinned. "Just imagine, Henry—an entire weekend _full_ of teasing Gansey for being unable to survive in the wilderness! How could you turn down an opportunity like that?"

With an apologetic shrug at Gansey and a wink at Blue, Henry said, "I couldn't."

Adam wanted to protest that he wasn't working his ass off in college just to skip an entire weekend's worth of prepaid meals and hot showers and dorm beds. But then Blue shot a smile back at Henry and started suggesting campgrounds she'd always wanted to explore, and Adam realized that he wasn't allowed to say no.

* * *

"What I don't understand," Henry said petulantly, "is why we aren't driving there in Blue's minivan."

"I'm not riding in a vehicle that can't go faster than seventy fucking miles an hour," Ronan said.

"But _I_ want to!" Henry countered. "Don't the rest of you want to see Blue Sargent drive a minivan? Isn't anyone else interested in what an amazing sight that would be? She'll have to move her seat so far forward to reach the pedals."

Blue crossed her arms. "Henry Cheng," she said, "I am appalled and offended by your derogatory tone towards those of short stature. This is extreme and uncalled-for stereotyping."

"But it's _true_ , isn't it?"

Blue acted like she hadn't heard the interruption. "Besides," she said evenly, "I'm not dropping a hundred dollars in gas money just to haul you and your ridiculous hair all the way across the state."

Henry let out a dramatic sigh. "But half of a camping experience like this is the road trip! How are we supposed to bond over strange games of I Spy and our collective inability to pick a mutually-liked radio station if we're not all in the same vehicle?"

"Henry, I think we're going to be doing plenty of bonding over Noah's fear of ghost stories and Gansey's inability to sing campfire songs. You don't want to find out what happens when we exceed our weekly bonding quota, do you?"

Noah put a hand to his heart in mock horror. "What happens then?"

Blue flicked a glance in Adam's direction, a silent invitation for him to join in. The corner of his mouth twitched, and he said, "Every bond you've formed that week becomes unstable, and all it takes is one catalyst for you to set off nuclear fission."

Noah grinned. "Nuclear fission?"

Blue nodded mock-seriously and took over again. "A bomb. Destruction of relationships of every kind. The friendship apocalypse."

Noah draped an arm over his forehead and fake-swooned into Henry, who just barely managed to catch him before both of them toppled over. "The _friendship apocalypse_ ," he moaned. "Henry, it's too horrible. We can't risk it."

"Fine," Henry said, the sappy look he shot Noah contradicting his exaggerated frown. "But why are we taking _three_ cars? At least taking two could give us _partial_ bonding experience."

Blue held up a hand and started ticking the reasons off on her fingers. "Gansey refuses to leave his Pig unattended for an entire weekend, Ronan has the same qualms about his car, you're afraid of Ronan's driving, and Noah doesn't want to third-wheel me and Gansey _even though_ ," she said pointedly, cheeks flushing, "there's nothing to third-wheel. Also, we need the trunk space."

Finally, Henry relented with a winning smile and a careful adjusting of his gelled hair. Adam looked over to see Ronan's reactions to their friends' ridiculous antics and instead noticed him leaning against the hood of his car with his head tipped back toward the sky and Chainsaw flying in circles over his head. He spared one glance at the rest of his friends—Blue was apparently trying to convince Henry that Google Maps was an unacceptable substitute for having even a vague sense of where he was supposed to be going—decided to leave them to their lighthearted arguing, and walked over to stand in front of Ronan and mirror his posture.

"You're aware that I'm riding with you," Adam said, keeping his eyes trained on Chainsaw's futile progress.

"Am I?"

"I'm not sitting in a backseat when you have plenty of room," he said. "And I don't believe Blue when she says another person in the car with her and Gansey wouldn't end up as a third wheel."

Ronan drummed his fingers against the roof of his car and dragged his eyes down to Adam's. "One condition," he said. "I choose the music."

Adam shrugged. "Fine."

The wicked grin that slid across his face made Adam regret his decision immediately. "Have you ever heard of the Murder Squash Song?"

"Should I have?"

The grin widened. "Abso-fucking-lutely."

By the time they reached the campsite, Adam was pretty sure he'd gone deaf in his right ear as well as his left. Then Ronan started up the Murder Squash Song for the one hundred and forty-seventh time, and Adam sadly realized that he only wished he had.

* * *

Camping was… strangely nice, if Adam was being honest. He didn't trust any of his friends to stand within ten feet of the fire, and he still expected a bear to steal their groceries at any given moment. But Ronan had brought multiple cases of beer, and he and Adam smirked at each other as Henry got roaring drunk and recited loud, misquoted poetry about the serenity of the wilderness while Noah smiled in encouragement and patted his head, and Adam was starting to think that they might not have a bonding quota after all. Meanwhile, Gansey was pitching their tents with startling ease.

"RCG," Henry said, interrupting himself mid-poem to stare incredulously at Gansey's second successfully pitched tent. "Hey. Campbell's Chicken Noodle. Gansey Three. How did you do that?"

"I've been hunting down Glendower's tomb for years," Gansey reminded him, reaching up to fix the glasses that he'd pushed askew. "I've hiked through half the woods along the East Coast and plenty of forests in Europe as well. You can't honestly think that I wouldn't have learned how to pitch a tent by now."

"But _Gansey,_ " Noah whined, having put away a fair portion of the wine bottle in his hand himself, "you aren't supposed to be able to survive in the wilderness!"

"That's what happens when you make assumptions, Noah," Blue said sweetly. "You forget that people might have hidden survival skills or that girls might not appreciate being teased about driving secondhand minivans. You should probably remind your boyfriend of that as well."

Noah turned to waggle his finger in Henry's face but ended up bopping him on the nose instead. "Teasing is wrong, Czeng."

"Tell that to yourself, Czeng."

Obediently, Noah shifted his hand and bopped himself on the nose as well. "Teasing is wrong, Czeng."

"Jesus Christ," Ronan said. He sounded angry, but he was still looking at Adam and grinning, so Adam wasn't fooled. "When the fuck is dinner?"

If Ronan thought that dinner would sober up the two members of Czeng, he was sorely mistaken. If anything, Noah got even more absurd in the light of the campfire, nuzzling against Henry's shoulder and toasting the stars with the last sip of his wine bottle. Then he started crying.

"Um, Noah?" Adam asked hesitantly. "Are you okay?"

"They're just so _pretty_."

He frowned. "The stars?"

"My _friends,_ " Noah hiccupped. "And the stars, obviously, but— _Adam_. You're so pretty. And Blue. And Gansey. And Ronan." He grabbed the sleeve of Henry's shirt and wiped away his tear tracks. "Henry, I just love boys so much. And girls. And others. Just… people. People are so pretty."

Henry patted Noah on the cheek and said, "I don't really think people are that pretty. Just you."

"I know. It's so nice." He yawned and said, "Don't worry, you're the prettiest," before closing his eyes and falling asleep on Henry's shoulder.

Ronan stood up, the movement putting him altogether too close to the fire for Adam's liking. "This is too sappy. I'm leaving."

But Adam saw him carefully tug Noah's empty wine bottle out of his hands and set it on the ground before heading off to the third tent.

The third tent. Out of three.

Adam frowned. "Blue?"

"Hmmm?"

"Why are there only three tents?"

Blue had the decency to look guilty. "Henry's car is a hybrid, Adam. Its trunk was too tiny to get the last tent in."

"But—"

"You can sleep in the tent with me if you want," she added quickly. "Gansey can sleep with Ronan. It's fine."

But Blue and Gansey had only been together for a week, and Adam could see her looking at Gansey's hand like she still wasn't sure she was allowed to grab it and tangle their fingers together. She didn't even notice that Gansey was looking at her hair like he still wasn't sure he was allowed to reach up and push it out of her eyes. Besides, Ronan had fallen asleep in Adam and Blue's dorm room too often for it to bother Adam much anymore. So he rolled his eyes, said, "I'm pretty sure I'll survive, Blue," and walked over to tell Ronan to leave room for two sleeping bags.

Ronan wasn't particularly understanding.

"You can't fucking sleep here," he scowled.

"Why not?" Adam challenged. "You fall asleep in my dorm room all the time."

"Yeah, and look at what happened the last time I did."

The raw note in his voice threw Adam off-balance, reminding him of the way Ronan had sounded after accidentally throwing a beer bottle at his head. _I don't know what the fuck you think you're doing here, but you need to get out right now._ He hadn't thought about it until this very moment, but Ronan hadn't fallen asleep in Adam's room since the day he'd woken up to blood and gasoline.

"You don't want me to sleep here because of what you might dream up?"

Ronan's glare was sharper than the final screech of the Murder Squash Song. It told Adam everything he needed to know.

"You shouldn't worry about that," he said. "Nothing you create is going to scare me off."

Ronan looked at him for a long moment. "I seriously doubt that." But he tugged his sleeping bag over a few inches, and Adam took it as the acquiescence that it was. He rolled his sleeping bag out, crawled between the thin layers of polyester, and turned to find Ronan still staring at him. He considered reassuring him again, or starting up a conversation until Ronan stopped frowning like he expected Adam to run screaming in the other direction, but it was late and it had been a long day and he fell asleep before he had figured out what he wanted to say.

He woke up when half of the tent fell on his face.

Of course, Adam didn't know that it was the tent at first. All he was initially aware of was a sudden weight settling onto him and making it difficult to breathe. It was only after he shoved himself out of his sleeping bag and clawed at the fabric until he found a hole big enough to wriggle out of that he realized that the tent had collapsed around him. And that the only reason he'd been trapped under fabric instead of a tent pole was that the tent poles had been stopped by the roof of Ronan's BMW.

For one blinding moment, Adam was consumed with rage, thinking Ronan had decided that ramming his car into the tent was an acceptable way to wake Adam up.

Then he realized three things all at once.

One: Ronan's BMW was still parked next to the Pig on the other side of the campsite, which meant that

Two: Ronan had dreamed up the car inside their tent, which meant that

Three: Ronan was still trapped inside.

The rage in Adam's chest froze into icicles of fear that grew until they stabbed into his heart. He was tugging the shredded remains of their camping tent off of the car before he could come to terms with what those icicles might mean.

"Ronan," he said quietly, throwing the tent poles to the side, and then, when Ronan didn't respond, " _RONAN._ Jesus, fuck, Ronan Ronan Ronan—"

The car had blood smeared across its windshield. Ronan's hand was sticking out from underneath it, and that hand was also covered in blood.

The icicles pierced his throat.

And then Adam was running, startling his friends awake and directing them to the dream-car with frantic hand gestures and pleading eyes. Between the five of them, they managed to push the car off of Ronan without crushing him, but even then he was so still, so terrifyingly still, as frozen as he'd been the first time Adam had seen him pull something from his dreams, that Adam couldn't breathe. It wasn't until Ronan blinked at him and shoved him away that the icicles finally started to melt, and Adam noticed how much their chill was making him shake. He scrubbed at the blood on Ronan's hands until he felt steady again. Then he dragged his gaze up to meet Ronan's eyes.

He looked furious. "What the fuck are all of you doing here?"

Adam's mouth dropped open. "That car could have crushed you, Ronan. It could have killed you."

Ronan was silent.

"Ronan, your own dream could have _killed_ you!"

"It's not like this is the first time."

He was gone before Adam could fully process the implications of _that_.

"Jesus Christ," Gansey breathed. Adam forcibly tore his gaze away from the blood on the ground to check on him. He was staring at the dreamt BMW with hollow eyes. "Is that what Ronan's car looked like when he wrecked it, Adam?"

"When someone else wrecked it for him," Adam corrected, but they were reflexive, barely formed, instinctual words—because the dents on the dreamt-up car were even worse than the ones wrought on Ronan's real car, and Adam was having trouble breathing again.

"I get it now," Noah said quietly, and his voice was so thin that everyone immediately turned to look at him.

"Get what, Noah?" Blue asked, her voice gentle.

"Why Ronan was so mad that I can read minds." Noah threaded his fingers together and peered at them through the holes in the lattice. "I told you guys that it works unpredictably, right? Mostly only when someone's in a highly emotional state. Well… you're all pretty emotional right now. But Ronan's the loudest."

Blue sucked in a breath. "What's he thinking?"

Noah looked mournfully at the dents in the dream BMW. "I don’t think it's my place to say."

Adam was on his feet without quite knowing how he'd gotten there.

"Adam," Gansey warned, "it might be best to let Ronan be alone right now—"

"Let him go," Noah said.

Neither comment mattered, because none of them could have stopped Adam anyway.

He found Ronan exactly where he'd expected him to be, sitting on the grass in front of his real BMW and staring at its headlights like he wanted them to blind him. They weren't on, but that didn't stop Adam from feeling unsettled.

"Ronan."

Adam could see the tension tightening Ronan's shoulders. "Go the fuck away, Parrish."

He sat down next to him. "I meant what I said. Nothing you dream is going to scare me off."

"Then you're a fucking idiot. That car could have landed on you instead."

He studied the blood still smeared across Ronan's hand, and the matching smear on his own from trying to clean them. "I don't think so." He hesitated. "That car used to belong to your dad, didn't it?" The look on Ronan's face said, _Change the subject_ , so Adam knew he was on the right track. "It's not your fault that it got damaged," he said. "You were rear-ended. That's always the other driver's fault."

"It was the other driver's fault," Ronan agreed. "And it was my fault. The two aren't mutually exclusive."

Adam drummed his fingers on his knee. "Let me be the judge of that. I don't think you're feeling particularly objective. How did your car get wrecked?"

Ronan let out the kind of sigh that was exhaustion and a final warning all wrapped into one. When Adam just looked at him expectantly, he tugged on his leather wristbands and said, "Fucking Kavinsky."

" _What_?"

"He wanted to race. We raced. He lost, got pissed, and rammed into my car."

" _What_?" Adam repeated. "I thought you didn't want to see his face again, let alone go racing with him! Why the hell did you agree to that?"

"I wanted to prove he was a piece of shit. I thought he liked his car too much to be that much of a piece of shit."

"I thought you said he wouldn't be a problem!"

"Yeah, well, I was fucking wrong about him again. It's not like—"

"Again?"

Ronan froze with his fingers still wrapped around his bracelets. The moon reflected off the hood of the BMW and the blood on Ronan's hand, and for a moment it was like he'd turned himself into one of his own paintings—beautiful, inscrutable, intangible, but also nervous and wary and painfully human. "Are you sure you really want to know?"

Adam just raised his eyebrows.

With another _this-is-your-final-warning_ stare, Ronan said, "Fine. I told you this wasn't the first time a dream almost killed me."

The icicles returned, frigid and sharp. "Ronan—"

"No," Ronan said. "No interruptions." It pained Adam, but he managed to nod. At that, Ronan continued.

"I met Kavinsky in high school. Besides my dad, he's the first and only other dreamer I ever knew. He was two years older than me and therefore had two more years of dreaming practice than I had, so I believed him when he introduced me to these sleeping pills and said they helped him control his dream powers. At that point, I was still just dreaming up random shit—I couldn't choose what I brought back."

Adam opened his mouth, but one look from Ronan closed it again.

"For a while, they were fucking great. I went out with Kavinsky on the weekends and chased pills with beers and came back with all sorts of intentional dream shit to show my d—Declan. To show Declan and make him jealous."

Ronan's tone was carefully casual, but Adam could hear what Ronan wasn't telling him. He probably did try to make Declan jealous, since Ronan didn't lie, but Adam knew that hadn't been his main goal. It was easy to picture a younger Ronan showing off his dreamt inventions to Niall Lynch and basking in his dad's pride and affection, mixing drugs and alcohol without imagining what the negative side effects might be. And if Kavinsky's grin was a little sharp sometimes—well, Adam had seen that drawing of the Barns. Niall Lynch's grin could be pretty sharp too.

"So what happened?"

If Ronan picked at his wristbands any longer, Adam was convinced he would either rub his fingers raw or snap one band in two, and he didn't have the money to buy new bandages or bracelets. So without thinking about it too hard, Adam reached out and clapped a hand over Ronan's wrist—and, by extension, his fidgeting hand. Ronan's fingers stiffened, but he didn't pull away.

"Ronan. What happened?"

Carefully, deliberately, Ronan flattened his palm so Adam's hand could settle more easily over his own. "One day I wanted to dream up something specific. Something large and specific and fucking impressive, and the regular pills weren't doing jack shit to help. I kept coming up empty-handed or with this useless shit that I could have made when I was five. So Kavinsky gave me this new pill to try. And… it was fucking stupid. But I did."

Adam's fingers tightened around Ronan's. "And it almost killed you."

"Well, yeah. Kind of. When I woke up, my head was pounding and my throat was dry and I was surrounded by all kinds of nightmare shit, and Kavinsky was nowhere in sight. It took me a while to get home because I felt like fucking death, and when I did my—my dad had just picked up the phone to call the police. Which was insane, because he had never liked the police, but I had been gone for three days."

Adam's heart skipped a beat.

Missing for three days. _Dreaming for three days_. No wonder Ronan had felt like a drained battery after waking up. If everything he'd dreamt up had been his worst nightmares brought to life, then none of that drug-induced sleep could have been restful.

"What… what happened to Kavinsky?"

"I wasn't allowed to hang out with him or use the pills anymore. Not like I fucking wanted to after that, anyway."

It all made sense, suddenly—pieces of Story-Ronan clicking into place that Adam hadn't even known he'd been missing. How Ronan could be surrounded by love and family for his entire life and still grow such sharp edges after his father's death. How he could stare death—by blood, by beer, by 80 miles per hour around a hairpin turn—in the eye without flinching. How he could wake up in a hospital bed with bandages around his wrists and an IV in his arm and be most worried about Declan finding out. He'd been dealing with nightmares come to life for years.

 _Nightmares come to life_.

"Ronan," Adam said slowly, "that isn't the only time your dreams have tried to kill you, is it?"

"Obviously not. I just dreamed up that car, didn't I?"

"No, besides that."

Adam could see the lines of tension spreading from the top of Ronan's head to his toes. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Adam narrowed his eyes and said, "' _I didn't have a knife with me, did I?_ '"

"Parrish—"

"I can't believe you! Why wouldn't you tell us?"

"Because it's none of your fucking business!"

" _None of our fucking business?! Do you have any idea what staying up all night in that hospital room was like_ —"

"Adam. Ronan. Is everything all right?" Adam twisted around and came face-to-face with the sight of crooked-glasses-and-muddy-boat-shoes Gansey frowning down at them, with Blue, Noah, and Henry close behind. "What's going on?"

"Ronan just—"

" _Parrish_."

" _Lynch_ ," Adam said back, exasperated. "Why would you keep this a secret? Were you worried about what we'd think? The truth is a hell of a lot better than the lie of omission you've been keeping up all this time!"

"Lie of omission about what? The car?"

"No, the—Ronan, tell him!"

Ronan yanked his hands out of Adam's grip—Adam hadn't even realized he was still holding them—and clenched them into fists. "Fine. Whatever. Gansey, the night that you had to take me to the hospital, I wasn't trying to kill myself. Night horrors attacked me in my dreams, and when I woke up, the injuries came with me."

Adam had figured it out. He knew Ronan was telling the truth. But hearing it out loud still made his world tilt. The things he'd always thought about Ronan Lynch were unraveling faster than Adam could spin new truths into place, and the person Adam was discovering was nothing like the person that he knew. Except that wasn't right, because Ronan was _exactly_ the person that Adam knew. He just wasn't the person Adam had expected—and was still foolishly expecting, despite all the times Ronan had proved him wrong.

Gansey's shuddering breath distracted him from his spiraling thoughts. "Ronan, why would you let us _think_ that?"

"Well, I couldn't exactly tell you the truth earlier," Ronan pointed out.

"But—why not? Why _didn't_ you tell us that you could take things out of your dreams earlier?"

Ronan looked away from all of them. The edges of his tattoo looked even darker in the shadowy light. "It's dangerous. My dad didn't want me to tell anyone."

"I…" Gansey closed his eyes, shook his head, and opened them again. "All right. Fine. But you did tell us about that last week. So… why not share the rest of it then? Why would you still keep this to yourself?"

Ronan hunched his shoulders. "I figured it'd be easier for you," he said. "Suicidal is something people know how to treat. Fucking night horrors are not."

Adam thought about Ronan waking up from a nightmare, frozen and bleeding on the floor of his suite. He thought about him waking up again in a hospital and being confronted by a terrified and furious Gansey who didn't know that Ronan could take things out of his dreams, let alone that those things could be deadly. He thought about him worrying that Declan would find out that he didn't have perfect control of his dreams anymore. He thought about Ronan letting Gansey believe he was suicidal because it was less terrifying than dream magic, and his chest tightened.

It was getting harder and harder to tell the difference between Story-Ronan and Real-Ronan, and Adam didn't know what to do about that.

Gansey looked like he wanted to cry, or hug Ronan, or both. He settled for tucking his hands into the pockets of his khakis and saying, "Thank you for trusting us with this."

"Well, I'm trusting you with it," Ronan said. "But Adam found out on his own, and Czeng and the maggot only get to know because of association."

Blue stuck her tongue out at him.

Noah shivered in the cool night air. He was still looking at Ronan worriedly, but Adam didn't blame him. He was still looking at Ronan worriedly too. "Can we go back to bed now?"

"No beds in the wilderness," Henry reminded him. "Only sleeping bags."

"Yeah, I know," Noah said. "Also, can we go back tomorrow? I think we've more than met our bonding quota for the weekend, and I'd prefer to avoid the friendship apocalypse. Plus peeing in the woods is much less appealing when it's pitch black outside."

Blue patted his head. Noah patted her head back, and looked less pale. "Of course we can go back," she said. "If we leave early enough, we can probably still make it to Tad Carruthers' Halloween party."

Ronan scowled. Blue laughed. Their friends scattered. Ronan saw Adam still looking at him and scowled again. "What are you still doing here?"

"Our tent got mangled by a dream-car, remember?"

Ronan stared at him for a moment. Then he pulled out his keys and unlocked the doors of his BMW. When Adam just raised his eyebrows, Ronan gestured at the car and said, "Go to fucking sleep, Parrish."

Adam thought of purchased wristbands and magical pens and just barely managed to hide a smile. "You're not going back to sleep, are you."

He didn't say it like a question, and Ronan didn't bother answering it like one. He just gestured at the car still streaked with blood and covered in tent scraps and said, "What do you think?"

Adam wondered if the blood on the car would match Ronan's if it were tested, or if it would even be classified as human. He wondered how often Ronan's dreams sank into nightmares. He wondered if Ronan's nightmares had ever sent him to the hospital while his father was alive. What came out of his mouth was, "What were you trying to dream up? When Kavinsky gave you that pill?"

The corner of Ronan's mouth turned up, but it didn't seem much like a smile. "A replica of my dad's BMW," he said. "I was tired of asking for permission every time I wanted to drive it. I wanted one for myself."

 _Now I have two_ , he didn't say.

 _Funny how I wanted to get my own car so badly that it almost killed me, and now I've gotten two without even trying,_ he didn't say.

 _Funny how both of those cars almost killed me too_ , he didn't say.

 _I know_ , Adam didn't say. _It isn't funny at all_ , he didn't say.

"Good night, Ronan," he did say, and hooked a finger underneath Ronan's wristbands, pressing his knuckles to the pale skin of Ronan's scars. He didn't leave his hand there for long. But while he did, Ronan's grin lost a few of its most jagged edges, and for tonight, that seemed like enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk when ch. 12 will be coming out, ngl. Definitely not next Sunday because this is tech week for my musical, and maybe not the Sunday after that either because I'm still going to be pretty busy. Also, I recently realized that the deadline for the trc big bang is in about a month, and I haven't started working on the fic I'm writing for that, so I should proooobably start working on it.
> 
> My goal for November is to finish and post at LEAST ch. 12, though, and hopefully ch. 13 too! We'll see how it goes.
> 
> In the meantime, check out [this tag](http://actuallymollyweasley.tumblr.com/tagged/kotib) on my tumblr to see all of the AMAZING art people have drawn for this fic! I'm constantly in awe of their talent.
> 
> Thanks to all of you who are being so supportive of my crazy writing schedule and this fic! I really appreciate it <3 And because I appreciate you, and because idk when the next update will be, here's a preview again:
> 
>  
> 
> _Blue blinked. "Did Ronan just… give you permission to drive his car?"_
> 
>  
> 
> _"I've driven it before," he said, but the words were hollow to his own ears. That had been while Ronan was fucking shit-faced drunk, and he'd still been in the car. This was complete control, and Ronan was as sober as Adam._  
> 


	12. Wildfires in the Woods

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for waiting patiently! (And extra thanks to [@pygmytyrants](http://pygmytyrants.tumblr.com) for beta-reading this in record time and being amazing as usual :D)
> 
> Enjoy the chapter!

Adam woke up with a crick in his neck and found Ronan slumped against the front of the non-wrecked BMW, his eyes half-lidded but still more alert than anyone who'd stayed up all night had any right to be. The sight probably should have surprised Adam more than it did, but he had a feeling Ronan was used to sleepless nights by now. "So," he said, more gently than he'd meant to. "Have you figured out what you're going to do with your extra car yet?"

Ronan looked at Adam's hands and put his wristbands up to his mouth. "Do you think your boss would be willing to drive up here with a tow truck?"

"How much would you be willing to pay him?"

Ronan just stared at him.

Adam resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "Yeah, he'll probably be fine with it."

By the time he finished placing the call, Ronan had stretched out his legs and crossed his arms behind his head, his shirt riding up to reveal the edge of a hipbone. Adam found himself staring.

He looked away. "We should probably clean the blood off."

He felt, rather than saw, Ronan tracking his gaze to the dream-BMW, still dented and dirty and smeared with blood. "Why?"

"My boss might think you killed somebody."

"To be fair, I almost did."

That was probably supposed to be a joke. Adam didn't laugh. "Fine, I'll do it myself. I'm not about to lose my job because my boss thinks I'm friends with a murderer."

"Wait." Ronan reached out and gripped Adam's wrist. Adam hadn't realized he'd moved close enough that Ronan could do that without getting up. "I never said I wouldn't do it, Parrish. Calm down."

Adam tried not to think about the fact that Ronan couldn't have cared less about Adam's boss's opinion of him until Adam said it might be a problem for his job. "All right. Do it then. I'll make breakfast."

* * *

 

Cooking over a fire was weird, but Adam got the hang of it fast enough that he was serving up scrambled eggs and bacon on paper plates by the time the rest of his friends stumbled out of their respective tents, yawning. Blue was the first to notice what was going on. "Is Ronan… working?"

"Yeah. My boss is coming to tow the car away soon, so I told him the car should look like it was wrecked, not used as the weapon in a hit-and-run."

"And he listened to you?"

"Eat your eggs, Blue."

Noah was already halfway through his plate. "These are really good, Adam!"

"Yeah, well, after the trainwreck that was Blue's dinner last night, I figured I'd better cook this time."

Blue gave him the finger and then nudged Gansey, who tried to look righteously indignant on her behalf but only managed amusement and a stifled yawn.

"There's coffee too," Adam said, pointing out the pot.

"Adam Parrish, you are a saint," Gansey said. Blue nudged him again. "I mean, don't be rude. Blue's dinner last night was perfectly edible."

"Don't lie, Gansey," Ronan said, appearing out of nowhere and stuffing an entire strip of bacon into his mouth all at once. "You're terrible at it."

Blue gave him the finger too.

Ronan grinned in response.

Adam wondered if he'd spent too much time in front of the fire. He was starting to feel hot, and it was possible that the flames were sucking up all the available oxygen in the clearing.

"How long until your boss gets here, Parrish?"

Adam forcibly redirected his attention to the bacon he was frying. "Probably another hour. He said a few customers needed to pick up their cars before he could start driving." Ronan nodded, which Adam took as permission to continue. "In the meantime, we should probably drive the car to the side of a road instead of the middle of the woods. I don't even want to imagine a tow truck trying to fit in here."

"That's a good idea," Gansey said, sounding more like his usual walking-magazine-ad self now that he'd downed an entire cup of coffee and half a plate of eggs. "We might want to—"

The ring of Gansey's cell phone was clear, jarring, and harshly generic.

"Damn, Gansey," Henry laughed, "what kind of old-man ringtone is that?"

"I'm sorry, I have to take this," Gansey said, as if Henry hadn't spoken. "Excuse me."

The ring of the cell phone cut off as Gansey pressed it to his ear and immediately trekked across the clearing and into the woods. The unmistakable sound of crunching leaves lasted much longer than Adam thought it should have. It was one thing to want a little privacy while on the phone and quite another to disregard the path and go hiking off in a random direction to get it. When he turned back to the rest of the group, Adam saw Blue frowning after Gansey with a similar look of confusion on her face. She muttered something under her breath that sounded a lot like "That's what he said last time."

Adam frowned too. "Last time? Blue, what are you talking about?"

Blue picked at the egg crumbles near the edge of her plate. "The first time I went out to lunch with Gansey, he got a phone call and said the exact same thing to me before disappearing out the door to answer it. I thought it was strange at the time, but I'd honestly forgotten about it until just now."

Ronan narrowed his eyes. "He's gotten a call like this before?"

"At least once, apparently," Blue said. "But I guess there's no way of knowing the kind of call he's getting when his ringtone is so generic."

"It's not, though," Noah said.

"What?"

"That's not his usual ringtone," he repeated. "I was hanging out with him when a telemarketer called him once, and the ringtone wasn't that one."

"But why purposefully apply a ringtone that boring to someone's contact?" Henry wondered. "Why bother?"

"Maybe it's symbolic," Noah suggested. "Maybe it's for his mother. Or the local Congressman."

They all laughed at that, but Adam could see Noah's forced casualness cracking and was reminded once again of his ability to read minds. "Could you actually tell?" he asked. "Were you able to read his mind?"

"I don't do it on purpose!" Noah replied indignantly. "I can't always help it, but I at least _try_ to avoid invading people's privacy."

"Noah," Henry said, with a look that was equal parts entertained and disbelieving.

"No," Noah admitted then, looking down at the grass. "It was like… like he'd shut all of his emotions down so he could take the call without worrying about what I might overhear."

Adam sometimes forgot about how short Blue actually was. She had so much presence that she could dominate a conversation or a group or an entire room just by straightening her spine. But right now, with her hunched shoulders and forgotten eggs, Blue was hovering on the edge of five feet tall and looked it. "Do you think—"

"Fucking Gansey," Ronan said, cutting Blue off before she could finish. "He's probably chasing down another obscure Glendower lead and wandered off to find a stronger cell signal. While totally forgetting to tell us, as usual."

Adam didn't understand why Ronan was bothering to mention a possibility that he obviously didn't believe until he saw the tight smile that Blue offered him in return. "As usual," she agreed, even though they all knew there was nothing usual about the situation. "I'm going to follow him so he doesn't get himself lost."

"Are you sure you won't get yourself lost?" Adam asked. "These woods are as new to you as they are to Gansey."

"I have a map," Blue said. "And a sense of direction. Two things that Gansey severely lacks."

Henry offered up a laugh at that. "Noah and I can stay here and start packing up, if you and Ronan don't mind going to meet your boss alone, Adam."

Adam shrugged and looked over at Ronan. "We'll need to take another car so we can get back here after my boss leaves."

"No shit, Parrish," Ronan said, already tossing him a key.

Adam caught it out of reflex more than conscious effort, too focused on furrowing his eyebrows. "When did you dream this up? You weren't holding it last night."

"The dream-car doesn't need keys," Ronan said dismissively.

"But then—"

Ronan turned and went back to cleaning the dream-car before Adam had a chance to finish.

Blue blinked. "Did Ronan just… give you permission to drive his car?"

"I've driven it before," he said, but the words were hollow to his own ears. That had been while Ronan was fucking shit-faced drunk, and he'd still been in the car. This was complete control, and Ronan was as sober as  Adam.

Blue scrutinized him, tilting up onto her tiptoes to get a better look at his face. Then she turned and scrutinized Ronan's back just as closely, as if she could read minds better than Noah. For a moment, Adam hoped she would explain what was really going on—because he sure as hell didn't know—but in the end, she just picked at a loose thread on her sleeve, said, "Damn," and hurried off to track down Gansey.

* * *

Adam considered just letting the incident go. But then they drove all the way out to the main road, parked the cars, and sat in silence for fifteen minutes without his boss showing up, and finally he couldn't stand the curiosity any longer.

"Why did you give me the keys to your car?"

Ronan looked at him like he was stupid. "I didn't get any sleep last night."

"Yes, I'm well aware of that. What does that have to do with anything?"

Ronan crossed his arms, clearly pissed that he was being forced to explain himself. " _So_ , I gave you the keys because I'm tired, and it doesn't matter if I wreck this." He inclined his head towards the broken dream-car.

Adam blinked. "Since when have you cared about the possibility of crashing? Or driving while you're tired? How is that any worse than driving drunk?"

"It's not," Ronan said. Then, "I don't drive when I'm drunk anymore."

"That's not true," Adam said, "you almost hit me wi—"

And then he stopped, because Ronan was glaring off in the distance instead of looking at him, and that was the point, wasn't it? Ronan _used_ to drive while drunk. He had almost hit Adam once because he'd been drunk.

But he didn't anymore.

Adam's throat felt tight. He said, " _Ronan_ ," and then his boss showed up.

Under different circumstances, Adam might have been annoyed by the interruption. But his boss tactfully ignored that Ronan's car appeared to have been wrecked for the second time in a month, or that there was an identical car parked just thirty feet away, and he was still Adam's boss. For that, Adam remained polite while his boss worked out how much Ronan owed him for towing his car back to civilization.

"I estimated two weeks' repair last time," he said, "and it should be about the same this time around. Unless Adam decides to put in overtime again," he added with a nod in Adam's direction, as if Adam somehow _wanted_ Ronan to know that fixing his car in a week had required overtime.

Thankfully, Ronan didn't comment on it. "Actually," he said, "can you just keep it at the garage?"

Adam's boss blinked. "You don't want to get it repaired?"

"Not—not right now," Ronan said, pointedly looking anywhere but at Adam. "You can charge me for keeping it in the lot or whatever, but don't fix it."

After a moment, Adam's boss shrugged. "It's your car." With that, he finished hooking up the dream-car to the tow truck and drove off.

Adam frowned at Ronan. "Why don't you want to get it repaired?"

"Fuck off, Parrish."

"But—"

" _Fuck off_."

There was something about the way Ronan tapped his fingers against his thigh as he said it that made Adam swallow and say, "Fine. You want me to drive back?"

"I still haven't slept," Ronan said, like it should have been obvious.

Maybe it should have been. Adam said "fine" again, climbed into the driver's seat, and watched Chainsaw fly ahead of him as he drove back to the campsite, stark black against the vibrant fall leaves.

* * *

They were packed up and ready to leave within the hour. By that time, Gansey was back, looking pensive and thoughtful and willfully ignorant of the concerned looks Noah was shooting him. He stubbornly insisted that the call had been about Glendower even though everyone knew he never looked anything less than excited when it came to Glendower, and Blue said nothing to confirm or deny his statement. Adam considered pulling her aside to ask if she knew the truth, but he remembered her asking about what Ronan's room was like even though it was none of her business and decided against it. If Gansey wanted them to know about the call, he would share. It wasn't fair of Adam to expect anything else when they'd all had secrets of their own up until last week.

So Adam gave up on trying to figure out Gansey in favor of trying to figure out Ronan.

He didn't even bother to ask if he was driving back to campus this time—just settled into the driver seat and watched with a frown as Ronan leveraged himself into shotgun. "You know," he said, "it's a long drive. You could go to sleep."

"The fuck would I do that for?" Ronan demanded, and turned on the Murder Squash Song for the one hundred and forty-eighth time.

Adam understood why he'd done it. It was easy to fall asleep in a car, and Ronan's eyes were already more than half-shut. But the last drive had been one of the most torturous times in his life, and he refused to go through that again. Instead, he shut off Ronan's music and said, "Tell me about your next assignment for Dr. Azalea's class."

Ronan's eyes opened a fraction. "The fuck would I do that for?" he repeated.

"You love complaining about her assignments and rejecting everyone's suggestions for them," Adam said. "Don't lie."

Ronan stayed silent.

"And," Adam added, "even the sound of your voice is better than that disaster with the audacity to call itself a song."

"The Murder Squash Song," Ronan said, "is a work of art all on its own."

But he sat up in his chair a little and began to complain about the absurdity of having to make art to represent fatigue.

"I don't know why the fuck she thought it was a good choice for this stupid class," he finally said more than ten minutes later. "It's not even an emotion."

Adam wasn't so sure. He understood fatigue like he understood few other states of being—the way it settled into bones and hammered through his skull with every beat of his heart, the way it dragged down eyelids and slowed movements, the way it accompanied every action until functioning through fatigue felt natural and getting a good night's sleep was the anomaly. It might not have been an emotion, but it could weigh down all his other emotions until he felt nothing at all.

Adam had experienced that. His entire childhood had been one long lesson in coping with fatigue—with _fatigue_ , not exhaustion. (Because exhaustion was short-term, was I-pulled-an-all-nighter-to-finish-this-paper-so-I'll-go-to-sleep-after-lunch-today, while fatigue was I-pulled-two-all-nighters-this-week-and-I-have-work-this-afternoon-and-there-are-bruises-that-go-down-to-my-bones-and-I'll-sleep-after-my-financial-aid-plan-comes-through.)

Adam had experienced that. Looking at Ronan, with his feet up on the dashboard and his eyes boring a hole into nothing at all, he was reasonably certain that Ronan had experienced it too.  But despite the restless snatches of sleep he'd managed to get last night, and despite the mountain of homework waiting for him back at his dorm, Adam had never felt more awake than he did at this moment.

"Well, Parrish?" Ronan said. "You usually have some smartass comment to make about my art shit. What is it this time?"

"Nothing," Adam said, because he couldn't figure out how to verbalize what was going through his head. "I'm sure you'll complain about this assignment right up until the day it's due, and then you'll end up half-assing something that Dr. Azalea is in love with, as usual."

"Oh?" Ronan said, challenge etched into the way he stretched his legs farther onto the dash. "Do you think my art is half-assed?"

"No," Adam said. "I think your assignments usually are, though."

When he didn't elaborate, Ronan said, "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

Adam still didn't respond.

But not because he was ignoring Ronan.

He didn't respond because he _couldn't_ ignore Ronan. He kept his eyes on the road, but Adam was painfully aware of every movement Ronan made, of how his posture screamed _aggressively casual_ because the way he felt about his art was anything but. It made him think of being asked to model when he clearly wasn't needed for an assignment on excitement. It made him think of being thrown a discarded sketch that was more beautiful than anything that had passed for art in Henrietta. It made him think of entering a playground for dreamers and finding himself taped up alongside the dreams, looking as impossible as anything else in the room.

It made him stop for gas when the tank was two lines above empty.

It made him pull into the parking lot instead of the highway after Ronan finished filling the tank.

It made him turn towards Ronan's expectant gaze and ask, "Why did you draw me like that?"

Ronan frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"The sketch in your room," Adam explained. "Why did you draw me like that?"

"Because that's what you looked like when you were talking to me," Ronan said. "Why else? What the fuck kind of question is that?"

"But—"

"But what? I don't lie, Parrish."

Adam stilled.

The truth sank in all at once.

_That was what he looked like when he talked to Ronan._

That was a version of Adam that he hadn't known existed. Adam Parrish—relaxed, smiling, and awake.

It was suddenly very obvious that Story-Ronan and Real-Ronan were the same person. He'd been talking to both of them this entire time—because there was no difference between them.

And with that realization, Adam grabbed the front of Ronan's shirt, met him over the console, and kissed him.

He didn't know what he'd expected. Violence, maybe. Definitely anger. What he _didn't_ expect was for Ronan to pull away, stare at Adam with wide eyes and wet lips, press his shaking hands to the dips of Adam's collarbone, and kiss him again.

Adam's racing thoughts blurred into _yes_ and _good_ and _more_. One of Ronan's hands shifted from Adam's collarbone to the front of his chest, and he burned. Adam moved his hands from Ronan's shirt to his neck to the back of his head, buzzed hair tickling his fingers, and he burned. Ronan made a noise somewhere between a growl and a hum of appreciation, and he burned. They were two raging fires meeting in the woods, and Adam had read once that when two wildfires crossed paths, they burned each other out. But he was starting to doubt that, because it felt like colliding with Ronan's inferno only doubled the size of his own.

He probably could have sat there in the blazing Virginian heat and kissed Ronan for the rest of the day. But then he pulled away to catch his breath and saw Ronan stifling a yawn as he chased Adam's lips.

"Ronan," he said softly.

"Adam."

"Is this okay?"

For the second time that day, Ronan looked at him like he was stupid. "Obviously." But a second later, he squeezed his eyes shut and blinked them open while shaking his head, like he wasn't sure he hadn't accidentally fallen asleep after all.

In response, Adam pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed a number he knew by heart.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Blue."

Ronan furrowed his eyebrows.

"Hi, Adam, what is it?"

Adam didn't move his gaze from Ronan's as he replied evenly, "I know our trip was cut short, so you and Gansey can use our dorm tonight."

Ronan's eyes widened.

"Really?"

"Yeah. I'll stay with Ronan. The suite is plenty big enough for both of us."

Adam barely bothered to listen to Blue's response before hanging up.

" _Adam_ …"

Ronan's voice came out strangled. Adam didn't want to hear any more, so he leaned forward and kissed Ronan again instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So while writing this chapter, I looked up whether you could actually cook bacon and eggs over a fire and found [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlg7Rd8sHL0), in which an enthusiastic camping man demonstrates that one can actually cook eggs and bacon inside a paper bag if one has made a campfire in the wilderness? However, if Adam had actually used a paper bag to cook their breakfast, he wouldn’t have had anything to distract himself with when he was pretending he wasn't checking out Ronan, sooooooo I took some liberties lol.
> 
> Anyway, thank you again for all the kind and supportive comments! It was really nice not to be attacked for having life get in the way of my updating schedule. :)
> 
> Annnnnnnd once again, I have no idea when I'll have time to write ch. 13, so here's a quick preview (which also happens to be the only thing I have written for the chapter heheh):
> 
> _Ronan woke up to the feeling of a warm hand pressed against his back. A long-fingered, calloused, freckled hand belonging to a boy with dusty hair, river-blue eyes, and a slightly crooked nose._
> 
> _For five minutes, he was certain he was still dreaming._


	13. A Place to Stay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes, it's been a while. Sorry for the delay - I had to deal with writer's block and finals and miscellaneous other distractions. Regardless, I hope you enjoy this chapter!
> 
> A million thanks to [@pygmytyrants](http://pygmytyrants.tumblr.com) for being an amazing beta, as usual.
> 
> (Also, just a heads-up, Adam gets a phone call from his dad in this chapter, but we only hear Adam's side of the conversation and there's no abusive language or anything like that. But he does have to deal with talking to an abuser, so if you think that might be triggering for you, then find me on [tumblr](http://actuallymollyweasley.tumblr.com) and I'll explain what happens in more detail.)

Ronan woke up with a warm hand pressed against his back. A long-fingered, calloused, freckled hand belonging to a boy with dusty hair, river-blue eyes, and a slightly crooked nose.

For five minutes, he was certain he was still dreaming.

Then he remembered Adam pulling into the parking lot outside of Walton at four o'clock in the afternoon and staring Ronan down until he helped carry their camping gear into the dorm. He remembered Adam dumping the equipment in the living room unceremoniously and dragging Ronan into his room. He remembered languid kisses and his heart beating frantically because they were alone in his room and Adam was kissing him and Adam _wanted_ to kiss him and where was this going, what was this what was this _what was this_ —and then Adam was pushing Ronan onto his bed and getting up before Ronan actually had a heart attack.

"Look," Adam had said, "an actual bed. Now go to sleep."

Ronan had blinked up at him, sleep-deprived brain slow to figure out the meaning behind his words. The moment it did, he'd tensed and said, "No fucking way."

" _Ronan_ ," Adam had said, and Ronan's breath had caught at the softness in his voice, at _Adam Parrish talking to him like he was something worth kissing._ "You're not going to dream up anything dangerous."

"You got any evidence to back that up, Parrish? Because in case you didn't notice, the only things you've ever seen me dream up are blood, gasoline, and a wrecked car."

"You're _not_ ," Adam had insisted. "At this point, you'll be too tired to dream."

"That's not how it works," Ronan had muttered.

" _Ronan_ ," Adam had said again, this time in exasperation. "You can't just stay awake for the rest of your life. Listen. I'll stay. I'll wake you up if I have to."

"You think that's helpful?" Ronan had demanded. "No. Fuck. You can't stay."

"Too late," he'd said. "I already gave up my dorm to Blue and Gansey."

There were other arguments Ronan could have made. He could have told Adam to sleep on the couch, or in Gansey's room. But Adam fucking Parrish was basically demanding to share his bed, and Ronan was too tired to be selfless any longer.

"Fine," he'd muttered, kicking off his boots and shucking off his jeans and trying not to feel weird about getting into bed with Adam watching him. Then Adam had stepped out of his jeans and pulled off his shirt as well, and Ronan had other things to feel weird about. Namely, the way his throat had gone dry and he was maybe, possibly, potentially developing a boner just from looking at the boy in front of him. "Adam, about today—"

"Nope," he'd said, ducking under Ronan's comforter and poking him until he scooted over. "Seventeen hours of being awake can impair your judgment to the equivalent of a 0.05% blood alcohol level, and you've been awake much longer than that. We're not doing this right now. We'll talk about it in the morning."

Now it was morning, and Adam's hand had rucked up the edge of Ronan's shirt while they slept, and his palm was warm against Ronan's back, and Ronan definitely wasn't dreaming.

He couldn't have imagined the sound Adam made as he shifted in his sleep, pressing his nose into Ronan's shoulder.

Ronan barely suppressed a shudder. "Wake up, shithead," he said, turning so he was facing Adam. But that was worse, probably, because then he had to watch Adam's eyes blinking open and Adam's hand running through his sleep-ruffled hair. He wanted to reach out and capture Adam's hand, press it to his lips for a kiss. But despite the other kisses, despite Adam laying there right in front of him, despite the fact that Adam's jeans were _on the floor of Ronan's fucking bedroom_ , Ronan still wasn't sure that he was allowed.

"Hey," Adam said.

"Hey," Ronan said. "It's morning."

"It's morning," Adam agreed. "Do you still want to do this?"

"This? What's 'this?'"

"I don't know," Adam said. "Whatever you want 'this' to be. Boyfriends, hopefully."

Ronan forgot how to breathe. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. If you want."

Ronan forgot that he hadn't brushed his teeth since almost dying and the last thing he'd eaten had been bacon and eggs and his breath definitely tasted like death. He forgot that the same was true for Adam. He tilted his head down and kissed Adam, and from the way Adam closed his eyes and wrapped a hand around the back of Ronan's neck, Ronan had a feeling Adam forgot too.

That didn't stop him from pulling away and saying, "Brush your teeth, you taste like Chainsaw's shit."

"I don’t want to know how you know that," Adam informed him. But he was smiling.

Ronan thought he might be smiling too. "No, you don't," he said. "I'll go see if there's anything left in our cabinets besides Gansey's old man cereal."

Adam's smile widened. "Don't tell me he eats Raisin Bran."

"He eats fucking Raisin Bran," Ronan confirmed. "With extra raisins."

Adam's laugh followed him out of his room.

It was strange to be awake at a reasonable hour. It was even stranger to _feel_ awake at a reasonable hour. Ronan searched through the cabinets and discovered that there was, in fact, something in there besides Raisin Bran. Coffee beans.

Adam came out of the bathroom and stood beside him, inspecting Ronan's haul. "Do you even have sugar to go with those coffee beans?"

"No," Ronan said. "Gansey likes to suffer."

Adam snorted. "Dining hall it is. You should shower first, though. You smell like exhaust and rotten eggs."

Ronan wanted to say that Adam wasn't any better, but the truth was that he smelled fine. Fucking Parrish. "Whatever," he said. "Don't let Chainsaw trick you into giving her treats."

"I don't know why you think that'll be a problem," Adam said. "Oh, and Ronan?"

"What?"

"I used your toothbrush."

Ronan scowled as he went to his bedroom to grab some clothes, and he scowled as he made his way to the bathroom. Then he stared at his toothbrush until his eyes crossed and he actually believed it when he told himself, _This is not a dream_.

* * *

When Ronan opened the door of the bathroom, Gansey was waiting in the kitchen.

"Jesus Christ," he swore, trying not to look like he was startled. "What are you doing here?"

"Blue's smuggling breakfast out of the dining hall for us," Gansey said, with that disgustingly fond look in his eyes that he got whenever he was thinking about the maggot he was dating. "In the meantime, I wanted to get the coffee maker started. The dining hall coffee is atrocious."

"Well, it looks like sludge whenever you drink it," Ronan said, "so I'm not surprised."

"Yes," Gansey agreed. Then he folded his hands in front of him on the countertop, leaning forward like a well-meaning guidance counselor. "Now listen, Ronan. About the other night…"

Ronan considered turning around and slamming the door behind him, even though he'd already brushed his teeth and hung up his towel. He considered crossing his arms and exuding aggressive distance until Gansey gave up. Instead, he crossed the room and stuck a glass under the tap—because coffee was disgusting and black coffee was its own peculiar brand of foul—and drank the entire thing before saying, "What about it?"

Gansey steepled his fingers. "You know… you can talk to me about anything, right? Or if you need anything, I just… I don't want you to feel like you have to be silent until you dream up a car smeared with blood. I don't want you to feel like you have to keep withholding secrets because of how I might react to them."

Ronan raised his eyebrows. "You're one to talk. Noah told us that wasn't your normal ringtone yesterday."

He didn't miss Gansey's flinch. "That's not the same, Ronan. That's not—it wasn't a bad phone call. It just wasn't what I wanted to hear."

Ronan frowned, but he could tell when prodding would make Gansey feel better and when it would only make him more anxious. This was one of those latter situations. "Whatever," he said eventually. "And to answer the question that you're trying to get around to asking me—I'm fine."

"Ronan, you don't have to—"

"I mean it, all right? I'm actually fine."

Gansey narrowed his eyes. "Well, if you're sure—"

"Ronan, are you done with the shower or n—Oh. Hey, Gansey."

Ronan almost didn't want to look.

Fortunately, the sight wasn't as bad as he'd feared. Adam had pulled his jeans back on, at least. But he was still shirtless, and he had still clearly walked out of Ronan's bedroom.

Gansey blinked at Adam. He turned and blinked at Ronan. He said, "Are you two—?"

"Ronan and I are dating," Adam said decisively.

Ronan's heart was pounding like he'd accidentally veered his BMW into the median of a busy highway, or he was standing in the middle of a burning building, or he was drowning in rain while a tornado approached in the distance.

Then Gansey smiled and said, "That's great."

His hands corrected the steering wheel. The stream of a fire hose found its way into the burning building.

"So out of curiosity," Adam said, "did you just run out of milk, or do you actually pour black coffee into your Raisin Bran instead?"

Gansey furrowed his eyebrows and said, "Why would I put coffee in my cereal?"

"I mean, there's nothing else in your kitchen," Adam said, but when Gansey still looked confused, he smirked at Ronan.

Ronan grinned back.

And with a final howl of wind, the tornado and the storm dissipated into mist, leaving room for the sun to come out.

* * *

Ronan couldn't believe that he still remembered how to be this happy.

He'd been dating Adam for two weeks, and it was.... He couldn't even describe it with words, and that was what made it so unbelievable. For the first time since August, Ronan felt like he could paint happiness for Dr. Azalea's art class. He couldn't wait to try.

Today, though, he was content to sit next to Adam on the kitchen's bar stools and eat half of a grilled cheese sandwich that he'd cooked himself.

Adam took a bite from the other half and raised his eyebrows. "Damn, Ronan, this is actually good."

" _Actually good_ ," Ronan scoffed, pretending that he wasn't pleased. "Who do you think I am?"

"Someone who lived off of beer and spite for the entire first month that I knew him?"

Henry laughed from the couch, where he was once again draped across Noah's lap and looked stupidly content. It didn't bother Ronan as much as it used to—although there was no way in hell he was going to tell Henry that. "He got you there, Birdman."

"How the fuck would you know?" Ronan retorted, pointedly ignoring Henry's fifth weird-ass nickname for him in as many hours. "You didn't meet me until mid-September."

"Yeah, and you lived off of beer and spite for most of October," Blue said. "So of course Henry assumed that you'd lived off of it in August and September too."

"There's no need to be rude," Gansey said, and for a second Ronan thought that he was actually going to _defend_ him. Which would be entertaining, if unnecessary. Then Gansey grinned and said, "He also ate greasy pizza from Nino's."

"Oh, yes, you're right," Henry said. "How foolish of me to forget. Lynch, you're a paradigm of health and nutrition."

"Well," Ronan said, "I was going to make you all food too, but if you're going to be insulting assholes about it—"

"Hang on," Noah said. " _I_ haven't been an insulting asshole."

Ronan smiled. "All right. Noah gets lunch. The rest of you fuckers can starve."

"Not still mad about the mind reading, then?" Adam asked quietly.

Ronan shrugged. "Not like he can help it." He decided not to add that it had only bothered him in the first place because it meant Noah had known the way he felt about Adam for months. "So, Noah," he said louder, "what kind of cheese do you want?"

"Ask if he has Monterey Jack," Henry stage-whispered.

"Why would I do that?" Noah stage-whispered back.

"So I can eat half, of course," Henry said, surprised into speaking at normal volume.

"Henry, I love you," Noah began.

"I love you too," Henry beamed.

"That doesn't mean you can steal my food."

"But Noah—"

"What kind of cheese?" Ronan repeated. "You've got five seconds before I stuff Gorgonzola between two crackers and call it a day."

"Do you even own Gorgonzola?" Adam asked, amused.

"Gorgonzola is just moldy Swiss, right?" Ronan grinned. "With the way Gansey buys groceries, I'm sure I can dig up some moldy Swiss."

" _Ronan_ ," Noah whined.

" _Czerny_ ," Ronan shot back. "Type. Of. Cheese."

Noah let out a sigh that was much more dramatic than the situation required. "Cheddar is fine."

"Fucking finally."

"All right," Henry said, "cheddar is an acceptable cheese."

"For the last time, I'm not going to let you eat my—"

Ronan noticed Noah's face scrunch up with worry before he saw Adam's blank stare. "Parrish," he said. Adam didn't move. " _Adam_. What's wrong?"

Slowly, Adam turned his phone around to show Ronan an incoming call. He didn't recognize the number, but it was clearly a Virginia area code. "Who is that? Adam, what the fuck is going on?"

Adam shook his head.

Noah said, "It's his dad."

Ronan dropped the pan he was using, grilled cheese and all. It hit the floor with a clang. At the same instant, Adam's phone went to voicemail. A few moments later, it started ringing again.

"Don't answer it," Ronan said.

"The last time I didn't answer a phone call from my parents," Adam said quietly, "my dad showed up in front of my dorm."

Blue swore.

Henry swore.

Ronan wanted to swear, but he didn't have the breath for it. He was really starting to hate phones, and phone calls in particular, because Gansey had gotten weird after his phone call two weeks ago, and now Adam's phone was ringing too, and Adam's hands were gripping the edge of the counter like a lifeline, and Ronan didn't know what to do because this wasn't a threat that he could punch and this wasn't his battle to fight but he _wanted_ to fight it because it was Adam, it was Adam, it was—

"So answer it," Gansey said, sounding clear and confident and presidential. "But remember that you're not answering it alone."

As he spoke, Gansey stood up and walked over to Adam's right side, and Blue followed, hooking her chin over Adam's shoulder. Henry and Noah scrambled off the couch as well. Only then did Ronan remember that it was _Adam_ , and he was allowed to be worried about Adam now. He moved to Adam's left side and took his hand, carefully ignoring the fact that it was shaking.

"Okay," Adam said, taking a deep breath. "No one else say anything."

He answered the call.

Its volume was too quiet for Ronan to pick out what Robert Parrish was saying, but that was probably for the best. First of all, it was obvious that Adam hadn't put the phone on speaker because he didn't want his friends to hear his father speak. Second, he could still watch and listen to Adam's half of the conversation, and that meant he could see that Adam's hand was still shaking, but his voice came out steady when he replied, "I was busy. What do you want?"

There was a pause, during which Adam's eyebrows drew tighter and tighter together until he was practically wrinkled. Ronan wanted to take the phone from Adam and yell at Adam's father until he hung up. He wanted to drive down to Henrietta and send Robert Parrish to the hospital in retribution for all the times he'd forced Adam to go there. But Adam squeezed his hand in a silent warning, and Ronan forced himself to stay quiet. This wasn't his battle to fight.

"I already told you," Adam said. "I don't owe you anything."

Another pause.

"I don't," Adam said. "Children don't owe their parents for allowing them to continue to live." This time, he barely listened for half a moment before arguing back, his voice firm. "No, I _don't_. That was your fucking job. And you were shit at it, so it's a good thing that you don’t have to do it anymore." He took a deep breath and then insisted, "You don't have to pay for my college, and you don't have to pay for my food, and you don't have to pay for anything having to do with me. I am out of your life, and I expect you to be out of mine. As of now, I'm never going to see you again."

There was a pause, during which Adam gripped Ronan's hand so tightly that Ronan thought he might break a finger. That didn't mean he wanted Adam to stop, though. Then, "I can," he said, voice tight like he was interrupting his father. "I can, and I will. I'm an adult. I have control of my own life. I've talked to campus security, and you will never be allowed to set foot on this campus again. We're done."

Ronan wasn't trying to listen in on the phone call. He respected Adam's privacy and would do what Adam asked and wanted to be a good boyfriend and shit. But Robert Parrish was yelling, louder and harsher than he must have been speaking at first, and Adam winced and held the phone away from his ear and suddenly Ronan could hear every word. Judging from the tightening expressions on his friends' faces, they could too. " _College isn't a lifelong hideout,_ " Robert Parrish was saying, harsh and cruel and condescending and altogether fucking awful. " _You can't live there during every break. You can't camp out in your fancy dorm during the summer. Where are you going to stay?_ "

"I…" Adam faltered for the first time.

This wasn’t his battle to fight—but that didn't mean he couldn't do _anything_. He knew Adam didn't want him to speak while his father could hear him, so he rubbed his thumb along Adam's wrist bone and rested his free hand on Adam's shoulder and used every silent signal he could think of to convey that Adam had a place with him. He saw Blue doing the same thing, wrapping her arms around Adam's waist and burying her face between his shoulder blades, and as much as he didn't like Gansey's maggot girlfriend, he had to admit that… fuck. Fucking shit. He did like Gansey's maggot girlfriend.

Apparently, something they did got through to Adam, because he cleared his throat and said, "I have a place to stay, and it's not with you. Don't call me again."

Ronan listened to ten seconds of Robert Parrish's stunned silence before Adam disconnected the call. It wasn't quite as enjoyable as punching the shit out of him, but it was pretty fucking close.

As soon as he hung up, Adam pushed his phone across the counter and sagged against the back of his chair.

For a while, no one quite knew what to say.

Then Noah muttered, "Good fucking riddance," and the vehemence in his voice was so startling and so very un-Noah that the tension broke.

"Good fucking riddance is right," Blue said, her grin sharp and proud. "Good job, Adam."

"I know a judge," Gansey said. "You could file a restraining order. He'd make sure it went through…" He hesitated. "If you want that, of course."

Ronan could feel the tension spreading across Adam's shoulders. He said, "You already told him not to get anywhere fucking close to you. A restraining order would just make sure he actually fucking doesn't."

Adam thought about it. Adam exhaled, slow and steady. Adam said, "All right, Gansey. Let's do it."

The rest of the day was spent figuring out what Adam should do next. He changed his phone number, got administration to remove his parents' names from every piece of paperwork that he'd been forced to include them on while he was a minor, and visited a judge with Gansey. It wasn't until after dinner, when Adam was starting to mention leaving Ronan's room and returning to his own dorm, that he traced a path along Ronan's knuckles and said, "So. Do I have a place to stay here?"

Ronan didn't even have to think about it. "Fucking always," he said. "Like I'd let you get out of cooking at Thanksgiving."

Adam dropped Ronan's fingers so he could brace his hands against Ronan's chest when he kissed him.

Ronan kissed him back and tried not to look too smug when Adam decided not to go back to his dorm after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Definitely not going to have time to post another chapter before the end of January because I'm on deadline to finish another fic for a different fandom's big bang, haha. But thank you all for your lovely supportive comments (that I promise I'm going to respond to at some point!) and I hope this chapter is enough to tide you over until I have time to update again. :)
> 
> Next chapter: Repercussions and Thanksgiving with the Lynches


	14. Ticking Backwards

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M BACK!
> 
> If I tried to write up all my reasons for taking so long to update, it would 1) be as long as this chapter, 2) be a rambling mess, and 3) probably sound like empty excuses, so I'm not even going to make the attempt. Just... I'm sorry? Thank you for sticking with me and being so unbelievably patient? Expect slow updates from here on out, but hopefully not as slow as this one? Idk guys, I'm starting college, so who knows how much time I'll have to write fanfiction haha. But I love this story and I love all of you and I actually know what's supposed to happen in the next chapter, so there will definitely be another update! ...Sooner or later.
> 
> Much gratitude goes out to [@nymphhadora](http://nymphhadora.tumblr.com) (you may remember her as @pygmytyrants from my previous chapters) for believing in my ability to actually finish this chapter and being an excellent beta, as usual. And! All the rest of my gratitude goes out to the people who sent me asks and encouragement on tumblr during this hiatus. You're all beautiful and wonderful and the reason that this chapter is FINALLY complete, so thank you! Trust me, I'm as relieved as you are.
> 
> But fair warning, the only reason I don't feel irredeemably guilty about how long it took me to update was that ch. 13 ended in a pretty happy place for everyone. This chapter, on the other hand... well.
> 
> Enjoy!

One second, Adam was highlighting his calculus lecture notes from last week in an effort to try and remember how the hell he was supposed to answer the questions in his problem set. The next second, Blue Sargent had somehow managed to snatch up his notebook and highlighter, toss them onto his bed, and perch herself on his desk, all in a single motion. She then proceeded to smile at him as if this was completely normal. 

(Although Adam supposed that because Blue Sargent was involved, it kind of was.)

“Hello, Adam.”

Adam narrowed his eyes. She was using her customer-service voice, the one that managed to convey  _ I'm running on two hours of sleep so you can be polite to me or die _ just by the way she shaped her vowels. “Blue. What do you want?”

“Can’t I just want to talk to my best friend, whom I love dearly and never see anymore?”

“You can,” Adam said. “But you generally do that from your own desk, not mine. Also, it's not my fault that you've only slept in your own bed three times in the last week.”

“ _ Adam!" _

Blush was an interesting color on Blue. It clashed rather horribly with the neon green streak Noah had dyed in her hair the other day—but the neon green streak also clashed horribly with her ripped purple overalls, so maybe it all balanced out in the end. 

“I'm just saying,” Adam continued, “don't try to pass all the blame off on my double shift and weird boyfriend.”

To his surprise, that statement made Blue eye him carefully. “That's what I wanted to talk to you about, actually.”

“The double shift?”

“The weird boyfriend, you idiot.”

“Could have gone either way,” Adam argued, although he couldn't quite keep the corners of his mouth from twitching. “What about him?”

Blue snagged one of his pens and started doodling on her overalls, as if owning ripped purple overalls wasn't anti-establishment enough already. “How are things going between you two? Since your… since that phone call?”

“They're good,” Adam said, and was surprised to find that for once in his life, he actually meant it.  _ Good _ wasn't something he came across very often. 

Blue drew a suspicious smiley face on her overalls. It sported a single raised eyebrow and a curled mouth and a judgmental stare that pointed directly at Adam. “So no problems at all?”

“I said good, not perfect.”

After all, Ronan had blown into this very dorm room yesterday morning to show Adam a caricatured painting of Gansey that he'd created using Gansey's sleeping face as a model. Adam had been working at his desk with his deaf ear pointed toward the door and all his focus directed toward his assignments. When Ronan had let the door slam shut behind the tail end of his hurricane, Adam had flinched. It had been instinctive, and unavoidable, and had nothing to do with Ronan himself, and he had still freaked out and left and refused to talk to Adam for the next several hours out of misplaced guilt. 

So they were working on it. 

But that was good too. It was nice to work for something that Adam actually thought he could get. 

“There's already too much perfect in our friend group,” he continued. “Henry and Noah never even frown at each other, and don't think I didn't notice that Gansey’s wearing a lavender polo shirt today.”

“Coincidence,” Blue insisted. 

“You guys  _ matched outfits _ ,” Adam replied, unrepentant. “Ronan and I have to have disagreements just to balance out the rest of you.”

“That's a terrible reason to have a fight.”

“You yell at Gansey for wearing boat shoes every day just to keep up your three-week streak.”

“This conversation isn't about me and Gansey.”

“The thing about a conversation,” Adam said, “is that you shouldn't start one if you don't want it to go both ways. Why are you suddenly asking about Ronan?”

At that, Blue finally looked up from the drawings on her overalls, rolling Adam’s pen between her palm and the desk. “I just… Are you sure you want to stay here for Thanksgiving instead of coming home with me? Because I know that you don't want to cause issues with money, but you know my mom always cooks too much food anyway, and you really wouldn't be imposing and my baby cousins would love to see you and I don't want you to have Thanksgiving with Ronan just because you don't think you have any other options.”

“Oh, Blue.” Adam reached out, rolled the pen out from under Blue’s hand, and started drawing. “I'm staying here for a lot of reasons. One reason is that I don't want to go back to Henrietta so soon after telling my father that I don't need to.”

“But Adam,” Blue protested, “you shouldn't—”

“Another,” Adam continued pointedly, “is that Calla always looks at me like I'm either going to destroy the house or fall down dead at any moment, just because she knows I notice when she's doing it. Also, your mom always burns the turkey, and Ronan has never actually burned anything that he's cooked in front of me. Not to mention that I genuinely like Ronan and am looking forward to making out with him over break. I'm pretty sure all of those are valid reasons. Do you disagree?”

Blue looked at him, blinked, looked down at the vines now twisting across the hem of her overalls, and sighed. “No. I just had to make sure I didn't need to beat Ronan up for you. And I was hoping I could convince you to come so I wouldn't have to suffer through my mom’s burnt turkey alone.”

“And the truth comes out,” Adam grinned, capping his pen. “Don’t worry about it, Blue. I'm sure Orla will show up with her husband for Thanksgiving dinner so she doesn't have to cook anything herself, and if Orla enjoys doing anything with you, it’s painting nails and complaining.”

“You got me there,” Blue said, then paused. “You realize that I'm never going to be able to wash these overalls now, right? These drawings are a symbol of our friendship and ability to have serious conversations without deflecting. I have to preserve them forever.”

“All I did was make squiggly lines,” Adam said. “If you really want something worth preserving, hand them to Ronan and give him a Sharpie.”

“He'd just write the lyrics to the Murder Squash Song across my ass.”

“Or he'd draw something really thoughtful on your front pocket and pretend Chainsaw did it.”

Blue considered that statement. “Knowing Ronan, he'd do both.” She clapped both hands on his shoulders—a distinctly Gansey gesture—and looked him in the eye. “He really is perfect for you.”

Then she hopped off his desk. 

“Did you just… give me your blessing?”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Isn't that Gansey’s job? Are you assigning each other parental duties now?”

“Sorry, gotta go, meeting Henry to tear holes in our clothes and drink tea from his expensive mugs.”

“Henry would never defile his vintage Madonna t-shirts and designer jeans.” 

“My and Noah’s clothes,” Blue corrected. “Have fun with your calculus.”

Blue had been his best friend for over three years at this point. Adam didn't know why he kept making the mistake of attempting to understand her. 

* * *

“Now, I restocked the coffee beans and cereal—and remembered to buy milk this time, before you ask,” Gansey said, glancing around the kitchen like the cabinets would help remind him of what he wanted to say. “Ronan said you two were fine to do the grocery shopping on your own, but I didn’t know if you would get a chance to go out before breakfast tomorrow so I wanted to make sure you didn’t have to worry about that. The lock on our door is still broken, so you might want to push the couch in front of it at night just in case. Declan and Matthew are welcome to stay in my room if they don’t want to book a hotel. I’m planning to return Sunday afternoon around four, but if anything happens before then, just give me a call and I can be back in three hours. In fact, if you think I might need to be here for any reason at all, say the word and I can cancel my plans. Maybe I should just call Helen right now and tell her to let Mom know that I can’t make it home for Thanksgiving after all. I’m sure she’d underst—”

“ _ Gansey _ .” Adam had been planning to let Gansey tire himself out, but this was getting out of hand. “I have been self-sufficient for the last ten years. I'm pretty sure I can handle a week in the dorms, even if that week does involve Ronan.”

“Dickface,” Ronan called out from inside his room. 

“Are you talking to me or Gansey?”

“Yes,” Ronan said. 

Gansey’s face contorted like he wasn't sure whether to feel offended or amused. “Regardless. You'll call me if the need arises, won't you?”

“Yes, Gansey, we'll call you.” Adam pushed at Gansey's rolling suitcase with his toe, watching with satisfaction as it bounced off the kitchen cabinets and slowly rolled back. “Now go enjoy your Thanksgiving.”

“You too.” Gansey considered Adam for a moment and then held out one hand for a fistbump. It was absurd and boyish and brilliantly Gansey, and Adam accepted it with a smile tugging at his lips. 

Gansey's responding grin was blinding as he reached down and grabbed the handle of his suitcase. “Ronan, I'm leaving!”

“Good fucking riddance!” Ronan replied before sticking his head out of the doorway. “Watch your shifts into second gear. That's when the Pig stalls out most often.”

Adam wouldn't have thought it possible, but Gansey's smile widened. “Thanks, Lynch,” he said, and then he was gone, and Adam and Ronan were alone. 

Adam turned and raised his eyebrows at Ronan, who very purposefully turned around and retreated back into his room. Unfazed, Adam followed him. “Second gear, huh?”

“You're the mechanic,” Ronan said. “Didn't you notice?”

“Oh, I noticed,” Adam said, “but I wasn't the one who made sure that Gansey knew too.”

“Shut up,” Ronan said, and kissed him. 

They'd been dating for a few weeks now, but kissing Ronan Lynch still felt like starting a wildfire. Adam had to break away before they burned down the whole dorm. 

As he did, he eyed the extra sheets draped across half of Ronan's room. “When are you going to let me see what's under those?”

“When I’m fucking done with it.”

He frowned. “‘It?’ Is all of that for one art piece?”

Ronan shrugged. “Dr. Azalea.”

“But I thought you already turned in your last assignment.”

“This,” Ronan gestured vaguely, “is for my first assignment.”

Adam felt his heart collide against his ribs, a  _ bang  _ rather than a  _ thump _ . “Happiness?”

“Yeah.” Ronan tugged the sheets more securely over his stack of canvases. “It's stupid.”

“It's not.” Adam reached out and took one of Ronan's hands in both of his, rubbing his thumbs over Ronan's knuckles. “Now come on, what are we supposed to be buying for tomorrow?”

* * *

“This was a terrible idea.” Ronan looked about five seconds away from throwing the pasta he was cooking out the window. “Adam, why the fuck did you let me cook? We should have met them for lunch somewhere. I shouldn't have let them come here in the first place. We should have driven to D.C. We should have stayed here by ourselves. Fuck, this dish is shit.”

Adam peered over Ronan’s shoulder. “Doesn't look like shit to me.” He snagged a bite of penne with a fork before Ronan could stop him. “Doesn't taste like it either.”

“It’s shit compared to my mom’s,” Ronan said, and that was startling enough to make Adam turn off the stove and take the spatula from Ronan’s slightly shaking hands. He hadn't heard Ronan mention his mother since before his father had died. Actually, he'd never heard Ronan mention his mother at all. 

“Ronan.” Adam frowned at his boyfriend’s hands, trying to find the right words. He'd never been particularly skilled at offering comfort. He'd never really needed to be. “It doesn't have to taste like your mom’s to be good. I'm sure they'll love it.”

“Matthew might,” Ronan muttered. “Declan’s going to hate it.”

“He won't,” Adam insisted, but the look on Ronan's face told Adam he knew that Adam had no idea what he was talking about. He was an only child, his parents were both alive and terrible, and he had never met Declan Lynch before in his life. 

“I mean it,” Adam said, not sure how he would back up that statement, and then there was a knock at the door. 

Ronan tensed, gave the pasta one last stir, opened the door—and was promptly tackled by a medium-sized bundle of brightly colored clothing and hair like sunshine. 

“Ronan! I've missed you so much! Your hair is so short! How is college?”

It's mostly like high school,” Ronan said, voice a little rough, “but with better friends. Are you still growing?”

“Like a weed,” came from behind Matthew’s mass of curls. “If you don't watch out, he’ll end up taller than you, Ronan.”

“Doubtful,” Ronan said, shoulders stiff but eyes still soft because Matthew had stuck his tongue out at him in response. “Are you coming inside for lunch or what?”

“Or what,” Matthew replied, although he was already passing Ronan in the doorway. 

Adam hid a smile in his shirt collar.

At the same moment, Matthew caught sight of him and bounded forward like a wayward basketball, only skidding to a halt to extremely vigorously shake Adam’s hand. “Hi! I'm Matthew, Ronan’s brother. It's great to meet you! What’s your name?”

Adam’s smile froze onto his face. Had Ronan seriously not told them—

“Hello, I’m Declan Lynch, and you must be Adam Parrish.” Ronan's older brother slipped past Matthew to introduce himself. He had Ronan’s sharp cheekbones, the type of suit that a millionaire would wear for a casual evening out on his own personal yacht, and a handshake with half of Matthew's enthusiasm and twice his firmness. “Matthew, don't you retain anything Ronan says?”

“I retain the things that matter, like that he said lunch was ready,” Matthew retorted. Then he glanced at Adam. “Um, not that you don't matter, obviously. I just forgot that you were going to be here the whole time. But now I'm even more excited to meet you! Ronan’s never had a boyfriend before.”

The Lynch in question was currently glaring at the pot on the stove—probably because he couldn't bring himself to glare directly at Matthew, Adam thought with amusement. “Shut up,” Ronan said, “and grab a plate.”

“I'll shut up if you let me drink beer with lunch,” Matthew said. 

“Not a fucking chance,” Ronan replied. 

Adam had no way of proving it. But when he turned around to shut the front door, he was pretty sure he glimpsed a small smile on Declan’s face. 

* * *

The rest of Wednesday went so well that Adam had to refrain three times from asking Ronan what he'd been so worried about. As he’d expected, Matthew had nothing but compliments to bestow on the food Ronan made, and Declan didn't mention it at all, which Ronan claimed was its own kind of silent approval. After that, they spent most of the afternoon shopping for last-minute groceries—or rather, Ronan and Declan argued about what they needed to buy while Matthew stealthily added cans of whipped cream to the shopping cart behind their backs. By the time they reached the checkout line, there were at least fifteen cans tucked between the bags of sweet potatoes and fresh green beans, but the older Lynch brothers placed each new can on the conveyor belt without a word.

Declan made dinner and spent most of the meal talking about his job.

Matthew begged Ronan for beer unsuccessfully half a dozen times.

Ronan painted all through the night, telling Adam that with a little luck, he could be finished by the end of Thanksgiving break. 

And then Thursday morning came. 

* * *

Adam woke up to yelling, which was both familiar and discomfiting. For a moment, he couldn’t distinguish reality from his dream about the double-wide trailer he’d grown up in. The sheets felt scratchier. The room felt smaller. He even thought he heard the sound of breaking glass. 

But then Declan shouted, “And it’d be nice if you’d answer your phone every once in a while,” the polar opposite of anything Robert Parrish would have said to his son, and Adam refocused.

“It’s college,” Ronan snapped. “I’m fucking busy.”

“Oh, please, you’re an  _ art student _ .” Declan’s voice was scathing. “Don’t bother pretending that you’re drowning under some heavy workload.”

Adam decided to grab a pair of sweatpants and open the door before somebody got punched.

“Good morning,” he said pleasantly, doing his best to pretend that the walls weren’t paper-thin. “You’re up earlier than usual, Ronan.”

“Didn’t sleep,” Ronan growled, which Adam already knew. “I was working on an  _ assignment _ for  _ class _ .”

“And I’m sure it’s very pretty,” the eldest Lynch brother said. Ronan was still silently fuming behind the kitchen counter, but Declan’s expression had shifted from derisive to politely neutral the moment he caught sight of Adam. “Good morning, Adam. Would you like some coffee?”

“I’d love some,” Adam said. 

“Sugar? Cream?”

“Just a little cream is fine, thanks.”

“Gross,” Ronan muttered. 

“You’re gross,” Matthew said over a yawn, wandering into the hallway. “What are we talking about?”

“Coffee,” Ronan said.

“Oh, yeah. That is gross.”

Adam furrowed his eyebrows. “I thought you two were staying in a hotel room?”

(It was the type of decision he had a feeling he would never understand—in his opinion, spending money on a hotel when there was a perfectly usable bed and couch in the suite was a frivolity and a waste. But Declan had thought a hotel room would be more comfortable, and so the money was spent.)

Matthew rubbed a hand across his eyes, yawning again. “We did.”

“But Matthew said he was going to use the restroom and ‘accidentally’ went back to sleep on your friend Gansey’s bed,” Declan explained.

“Lame,” Ronan said. But this time he reached out and ruffled Matthew’s hair, so Adam figured things would be all right.

Less than an hour later, the Lynch brothers were arguing again.

“What do you think you're doing?” Declan demanded. 

“Making the spice rub for the fucking turkey, like I said I was going to,” Ronan growled. 

“With  _ those  _ spices? You're doing it completely wrong.”

“No, I'm fucking not.”

“It doesn't need sage.”

“Yes, it does.”

“How would you even know?”

“Because I actually cared about helping Mom out with Thanksgiving dinner, unlike  _ you _ , and I listened when she was teaching me! It's parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, like in that fucking song, but without the parsley because who the fuck needs parsley anyway. And then if you’re not a fucking idiot, you’ll remember that it also uses salt, pepper, and garlic powder. That's what she told me.”

“Yeah? Then I'm sure she would have  _ loved _ to hear you repeat it back like  _ that _ .”

“ _ Guys _ ,” Matthew whined. 

Ronan turned to him. “Matthew, you always hung around the kitchen at Thanksgiving too. Tell Declan that he's wrong.”

Matthew bit his lip, eyes darting between the two of them, and said, “I'm sorry. I don't remember how Mom made it.”

Declan and Ronan both froze for such a long moment that Adam inexplicably remembered the drawing he’d seen on Ronan’s wall the first time he ever entered his room—Declan and Matthew wrestling in the grass, Ronan perched on Niall’s back, and Aurora Lynch smiling softly in the background.

_ Which was worse? To have never felt the kind of love that the Lynches offered each other, or to grow up surrounded by that love, only to have it all ripped away in a single bloody morning? _

Declan sighed. “Maybe it  _ has _ been too long since I helped Mom in the kitchen,” he said. “Go ahead and do what you want, Ronan.”

Ronan’s knuckles were white as he gripped the edges of the mixing bowl. “Who even fucking cares about the turkey anymore?”

“I do!” The turkey was lying on the other end of the counter, so Matthew nudged it within Ronan’s reach. “Come on, Ro, I’ll help you with the turkey.”

“I can start peeling potatoes,” Adam offered.

Declan stiffened like he had forgotten Adam was there. But when he turned to face him, his smile looked unshakable. It would have been enough to make Adam question whether Ronan and Declan were actually related, except that they shared too many facial features. “That’d be great, Adam,” he said, as if tension wasn’t stretched between everyone in the room like bungee cords just waiting to snap. “But I don’t want you to feel like we have a monopoly on tonight’s menu. Do you have any family recipes you want to make?”

Adam flinched—but a quick look at the rigid lines of Ronan’s back told him that one family’s worth of drama was enough for this Thanksgiving, so he covered it by pulling the bag of potatoes closer to him. “No,” he said simply. “My parents never cared much for Thanksgiving.”

Ronan snorted, and not kindly. “You can say that again.”

Matthew looked between his siblings and Adam, frowning. “So. What are we doing for lunch?”

* * *

Lunch was an argument, as Ronan thought they would be too full to eat dinner and Declan thought he was just trying to be difficult. Cooking was an argument, as they were constantly bumping shoulders and using each other's mixing spoons and changing the oven temperature. Chainsaw flew into the kitchen at one point, looking for scraps, and that sparked yet  _ another _ argument, as Declan couldn't decide which was more horrifying: that Ronan had broken the dorm’s rules to get a pet, that said pet was a  _ raven _ , or that Ronan was planning on feeding her some of the leftover turkey later. 

When the Lynch brothers got along, it made this too-large-for-a-couple-of-college-freshmen dorm feel like a home. 

When they were fighting, it made this too-small-for-a-couple-of-angry-boys dorm feel like a certain double-wide trailer that Adam was still trying to put behind him. 

And on top of  _ that _ , he was developing a migraine—because everything sounded louder when you could only hear out of one ear. 

So when Matthew went digging through their grocery bags, surfacing only to exclaim that they had forgotten to buy pumpkin pie filling, Adam jumped at the chance to get out of Walton. 

“I think there are a few grocery stores just off-campus that are still open on Thanksgiving,” he said. “I can bike around and see if any of them carry pumpkin pie filling.”

“Oh, we couldn't ask that of you,” Declan said. 

“It's really not a problem,” Adam replied. “Besides, I want pumpkin pie just as much as Matthew does.”

“Don't be stupid,” Ronan said. Then, when Adam turned to frown at him, “It’s fucking freezing outside.” And he tossed the keys to the BMW at Adam. 

Adam caught them out of reflex and sheer luck, furrowing his eyebrows. If he'd been having a shitty day, how much shittier had Ronan been feeling? He’d spent the entire day arguing with the only family he had left. “Ronan,” he started, and then hesitated, not wanting to offend Declan. In the end, he settled on, “Do you want to come with me?”

Ronan just shoved his hands in his pockets. “Nah,” he said. “Gotta keep an eye on the turkey.”

Adam frowned at him again, but when Ronan didn't budge, he had no choice but to leave. 

* * *

Buying pumpkin pie filling on Thanksgiving afternoon took Adam almost an hour. It turned out to be more difficult to find an open store than he'd anticipated, and if he'd lingered in the one store he  _ had _ found, walking through every aisle and relishing that it was quiet enough for him to hear the buzz of the fluorescent lights… well, no one could prove it. 

In any case, by the time he returned, Ronan was no longer in the kitchen. Instead, his awful electronic music was blaring inside his room. 

“The turkey finished cooking, so Ronan decided to let  _ us _ make the rest of dinner while  _ he _ went back to  _ painting _ .” Declan didn't roll his eyes, but with that tone of voice, he didn't need to. 

“Well,” Adam replied, “he’s extremely dedicated to his art. He wants everything he works on to be perfect. That's what makes him such a good artist.”

Declan looked like he couldn't imagine Ronan Lynch being dedicated to anything. “Good for him,” he said, sounding unconvinced. “Were you able to find the pumpkin filling, then?”

Adam nodded. 

“Awesome!” Matthew sprang up from where he'd been lounging on the couch. “Do you want to help me make the pie, Adam?”

What Adam really thought he should do was check on Ronan. But Matthew’s eyes were shining with excitement, and Adam found himself unable to refuse. 

Between making pie, throwing together a few side dishes, and reheating the turkey once everything else had finished baking, hours passed without Adam noticing. Suddenly it was seven o’clock, and dinner was ready. 

“We usually try to eat by five,” Declan said, sliding into his chair at the kitchen table, “but with putting everything together ourselves, I suppose delays were inevitable. I hope you don't mind, Adam.”

Adam thought Declan must not have actually gone to college to believe that a seven o’clock dinner was some horrible catastrophe. “It's fine,” he assured him. “Should I go get Ro—?”

“RONAN!” Matthew shouted out of nowhere, making Adam jump. “DINNER!”

“He's fifteen feet away, not five hundred,” Declan chided, although even he seemed unable to properly discipline Matthew. “I’m pretty sure you didn't have to scream that loudly in order for him to hear you.”

“Yeah, but it was fun,” Matthew grinned. “And apparently necessary, because he's STILL NOT OUT HERE!” 

A pause. 

“RONAN?!”

“I'm coming, I'm coming, Jesus,” Ronan said, shrugging on his leather jacket as he came out of his room. “I had to finish the thing I was working on, calm the fuck down.”

“We were all waiting for you,” Matthew said, in a supercilious tone he could only keep up for half the sentence before breaking into giggles, but Adam’s eyes narrowed as he took a second look at Ronan’s hands. 

Declan followed his line of sight and frowned. “Ronan… Ronan, are those bandages? Are you all right?”

“Calm the fuck down,” Ronan repeated. “My hands slipped, it's not a big fucking deal.”

Declan’s frown only deepened. “You cut yourself… on art supplies?”

“Ever heard of a palette knife?” Ronan said, scathing. 

“Nope!” Matthew broke in cheerfully. “Now come on, Ronan, sit down, we have to pray.”

Ronan's shoulders stiffened. “Right.” He sat down next to Adam. “I guess that's your job now, Declan?”

For the first time since Adam had met him, Declan looked visibly uncomfortable. “Actually, I was thinking we could all say it together?”

Ronan clasped his hands together so tightly, Adam thought it must be hurting the cuts on his palms. “Fine.”

He bowed his head, and after a moment, Matthew and Declan followed suit. “ _ Bless us, O Lord, and these, thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from thy bounty, through Christ Our Lord. Amen. _ ”

“Amen,” Adam said along with them, although he wasn't sure he believed in gifts or bounty, let alone a benevolent God who supposedly offered them. It just seemed like the polite thing to do. 

When they were done, Matthew's head popped back up like a puppy's. “Okay! Let's eat!”

Declan smiled, passed Matthew the mashed potatoes, and stood up to begin cutting into the turkey. Adam got so caught up in filling his plate with green beans and sweet potato casserole and stuffing and peas and turkey and gravy and cranberry sauce—he may have been getting three meals a day from the dining hall, but putting as much food on his plate as he could, whenever he could, was second-nature by now—that he didn't look over at Ronan until he'd sampled everything in reach. 

“Ronan,” Adam said, “this turkey is amazing. Whenever I go to Thanksgiving at Blue’s house, her mom always burns it and makes us eat it anyway, but I… Ronan, why is your plate empty?”

Ronan was staring off at nothing. 

“Yeah, Ronan, if you don't get some food soon, I'm finishing off the sweet potato casserole without you.”

No, not nothing—the empty chair at the head of the table. 

Adam started to get a hard feeling in the pit of his stomach. 

“Ronan?”

Ronan stood abruptly and nearly knocked his chair over. “I need a drink,” he said before heading toward the refrigerator. 

“A drink,” Declan said drily. 

Ronan threw open the refrigerator door. 

“Are you serious? Beer on Thanksgiving?” 

He grabbed one, seemingly at random, and slammed it on the counter. “Yeah, Declan, beer on fucking Thanksgiving. Who's gonna stop me?”

“I—”

“No, I mean it,” Ronan said. “Who's gonna stop me? Because Mom hasn't spoken in months, Dad’s dead, and I don't have to listen to a word you say. You're not our fucking parents.”

Declan went completely still, as if this was another one of Ronan's paintings. Adam thought he knew which emotion Dr. Azalea would accept this one for.  _ Heartbreak _ . 

“Shit,” Ronan said, “I’m sorry.” 

The door slammed shut behind him when he left. 

For a moment, silence. 

Then, “Ronan, wait!”

Matthew scooted out of his chair and hurried after him. 

Adam got up and ran to Ronan's room, intending to use his window to see if Ronan headed into the parking lot, but when he finally tugged Ronan's door open, he couldn't do anything but stare. 

At last, the sheets Ronan had been using to hide his happiness assignment had been tossed aside, leaving the project in full view. 

It was a wreck. 

Adam thought Ronan had actually been proud of how his artwork was turning out, but that was clearly no longer the case. Several of the canvases had been slashed through, while others looked like they had been kicked in. A paint tube had been squeezed out over a few more, leaving behind red paint hardened and flaking to the touch like dried blood. Preliminary sketches had been torn up and scattered over the mess, perverted confetti celebrating creative disaster. And when Adam finally remembered to lean out and look for Ronan, all he noticed was another pile of Ronan's ruined paintings that he’d apparently thrown out of the window. Everything was just—

“What the  _ fuck _ is this?”

“It’s his art,” Adam said. “He's been working on these canvases for weeks, insisting that he was getting close to finishing, insisting that his next idea was going to be the right one, and now it's all destroyed.”

But when he turned around, Declan wasn't staring at the ruined paintings. He was staring at the objects that Adam had gotten used to after spending so much time in Ronan's room. 

“What?” Adam asked. “You can't tell me you don't know about Ronan's dreams.”

“Of course I know about his dreams,” Declan snapped, his eyes too wide and horrified to make his harsh tone effective. “But these are…”

Adam looked around and tried to remember how it had felt to see Ronan's room for the first time. The unnaturally bent sword, the twisted clock that ticked backwards, the dark stain on his floor that was now mostly hidden by ripped canvases and red paint…. That pit in his stomach came back. He'd  _ known _ the objects weren't exactly fun dream souvenirs,  _ known _ they could even look menacing, but they were just dispersed among the other objects, right? Tucked between self-bouncing balls and clocks that worked properly, hidden behind dream lights and whimsical inventions? Everyone had nightmares sometimes, and anyway, Adam hadn't seen Ronan dream up anything bad since that night at the campground. Of course, he hadn't been around Ronan every night—but he'd been around sometimes—and Ronan had never objected when Adam asked to spend the night, he'd never said that there was anything to be worried about—but then he was always the one who woke up first, and last night he had never fallen asleep at all. 

“This isn't normal,” Adam said. It wasn't a question because he already knew the answer. 

He knew it wasn't normal. 

But Ronan had been so happy for the last few weeks—he’d  _ thought _ Ronan had been so happy—that he'd stopped worrying. 

Adam felt, abruptly, like a terrible boyfriend. 

“No, it’s not  _ normal _ ,” Declan said derisively. “None of this is fucking  _ normal _ . I haven’t seen him dream like this since…”

“Since Kavinsky?” Adam guessed.

“How do you know about Kavinsky?”

For some reason, the question snapped Adam into action. “This may surprise you,” he said, “but being in a relationship occasionally requires communication.”  _ Except, apparently, when you destroy weeks’ worth of hard work. No, that’s not worth mentioning at all.  _ Adam pushed the thought out of his mind. “Listen, Declan, I still have Ronan’s keys. That means he can’t have gotten that far. You should take your car and look around off-campus. He likes to go to St. Agnes or Nino’s, but check liquor stores too. I’ll search his usual on-campus hideouts because you can’t exactly find those on Google Maps.”

Just then, someone started banging on the front door. For one hopeful moment, Adam thought Ronan might have changed his mind about storming out. But when he flung the door open, only Matthew was waiting on the other side, red-faced and breathless. 

“I tried to run after him, but by the time I went into the hallway, he was already gone. I went down the stairs and looked around, but I couldn’t—I couldn’t figure out which direction he’d taken.”

“That’s okay, Matthew,” Adam said. “We’re going to find him. You stay here in case he comes back, all right? Do you have my phone number?”

Matthew shook his head, so Adam took Matthew’s phone out of his hand and punched his number into his contacts, sending himself a text so he would have Matthew’s number as well. Then he did the same to Declan’s phone, grabbed his coat off the couch, and felt in his pockets to make sure Ronan hadn’t taken his keys without Adam noticing after all. They were there, a cool and hard and reassuring weight.

In the same time span, Declan had barely managed to put on one shoe. “You seem to have this search-team business down to a science. Have you… has something like this happened before?”

Adam felt something shatter inside of him. “Not in a while,” he managed to say.

Then he was gone.

* * *

Adam checked everywhere. Every classroom Ronan had bribed or broken his way into, every tree he’d sketched, every bench he’d fallen asleep on. By the time he got back to Walton, it was almost nine, Thanksgiving dinner was a forgotten feast weighing down the kitchen table, and nobody had been able to find Ronan Lynch.

Finally, feeling guilty and desperate, Adam called Gansey.

“Adam! I’m so happy to hear from you! I hope you’re having a lovely Thanksgiving. I’m just,” he hiccupped, “watching Food Network with Helen. Because obviously we haven’t seen enough—hic—food for one day.” 

Gansey sounded sleepy, wine-drunk, and content. Adam could picture him leaning against Helen on an extravagantly luxurious couch in their living room, even though he had yet to actually see a photograph of Gansey’s sister. It made him feel even worse about saying, “Ronan is missing again.”

Gansey caught himself mid-laugh. “What? But I thought—”

“I don’t think it’s anything serious,” Adam was quick to add. “I mean… you know. Now that we know the truth about that one time. But he left during dinner and Declan and I have checked all the usual places and I….” He sighed. “I would just feel better if I knew where he was.”

Gansey was quiet for a while. “Did he take his car?”

“No.”

More silence. “Did you check the roof?”

Adam felt his heart stop, restart, and stutter again, all in the space of a moment. “The  _ roof _ ?! Gansey, I thought we just established that Ronan wasn’t—”

“Not like that!” Gansey interrupted hastily. “Ronan and I used to go up to the roof to talk. We haven’t been up since… but anyway, it’s worth a shot.”

Adam’s heart did its best to reestablish a natural rhythm. He didn’t think it was particularly successful. “Oh. Okay. Thanks, Gansey.” 

“Do you need me to come up? I wasn’t being flippant, you know, when I said I would the other day. If you’re concerned that Ronan might—”

“No!” Adam’s voice was too loud for the near-empty campus. “No, Gansey, you really don’t need to come. You’ve already been helpful enough.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” Adam hesitated, squeezed his eyes shut, and opened them again. “I’m sorry for calling you like this. Don’t worry, all right? Ronan is fine. This isn’t like before.”

“Just text me when you find him, okay?” 

Gansey’s voice was smooth, measured, and nowhere near immature enough to belong to an eighteen-year-old boy.

Adam tried not to let the guilt crush him like a cartoon anvil when he said, “Of course I will, Gansey. Have a nice night.”

* * *

After a moment’s indecision, Adam ducked into Ronan and Gansey’s suite on his way up to the roof. It had gotten cold, and Ronan’s leather jacket offered almost no insulation, so he just wanted to grab a couple hats and maybe a blanket before heading up to the roof.

Of course, Matthew Lynch stopped him in his tracks.

“Did you find Ronan yet?!”

Adam shook his head. “Still looking. Gansey told me about another place I haven’t checked yet.”

“Okay,” Matthew said before handing Adam a brown paper bag.

Adam frowned. “What is this?”

“Well, you both pretty much missed dinner, so I filled up some plastic containers for you,” he said. “They should still be warm. There are forks and knives in there too.”

“I—thank you, Matthew.”

“I had to do something while I waited,” Matthew shrugged. “Now I’m working on this.” 

He turned around in his seat and gestured at the kitchen table, on which rested a medium-size square canvas. From the underlying design, Adam recognized it as one of the ones that Ronan had elected to squirt paint over rather than completely mutilate, but it was getting harder and harder to make that distinction. Matthew was methodically covering every inch of the canvas in a gentle, chrysanthemums-at-sunrise yellow.

“You’re repainting one of Ronan’s canvases?” Adam asked in surprise.

Matthew shrugged. “He said he was having trouble with his happiness assignment. I thought this might help.”

Adam looked at the bag of food in his hands, at the serene smile on Matthew’s face, and at the yellow canvas. For the first time, he understood why Ronan had such a soft spot for Noah Czerny.

“Paint fast,” he said. “Ronan will be back soon.”

He draped one of Gansey’s spare blankets over his shoulders and took the stairs as high as he was allowed to go, and then higher. The door to the roof read,  _ Locked: Authorized Access Only _ , but when he pushed on it, it swung open.

Adam poked his head out. The wind whistled in his one good ear, making it difficult to hear anything.

He squinted into the darkness.

“Ronan?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: What in the World Is Going through Ronan Lynch's Head
> 
> Also, I'm on [tumblr](http://actuallymollyweasley.tumblr.com).


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